So Not a Hero (31 page)

“Be careful. Richard and Darla may be here somewhere. If you find them and they’re badly hurt …”

“I’ll grab them and cut out,” I said. “Better to save a life now and thrash the bad guy later.”

Greg smiled and stood up with Rocket in his arms. “That’s thinking like a hero. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He tried to sound confident, but I think we both suspected that whatever happened would be over long before he returned.

I crept into the briefing room and glanced around. The monitors on the wall were showing only static and the lights on the communications panel were dark. Not surprising. Daniel had been the guru in charge of all our technical toys. He’d probably disabled them the moment he got back with my blood in his hands.

A moaning sound from the kitchen caught my attention and I padded as quietly as a nine-hundred pound girl could and peered through the door’s porthole. It took me a moment, but eventually I spotted Richard sitting on the floor in the far corner of the room. I pulled open the door and walked slowly over to him. What I saw made me weak in the knees.

I stood there, watching silently, as one of the most self-assured men—to the point of being an incredible ass most times—in the world hugged himself and rocked back and forth. I looked around the room quickly to make sure no one else was around and then stepped closer. He was turned away from me, mumbling the same phrase over and over. So softly I couldn’t quite make it out.

“Richard?” I asked as I reached out to put my hand gently on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

His head whipped around to stare at me, eyes bloodshot and wide. The eyes of a mad man. One side of his face was bruised, his lip was split open, and there was a chunk of hair missing from just above his left ear. When his arms unwrapped themselves and his hands became visible, I noticed the dark brown strands still held tightly in one fist.

“Hate,” he spat as he scrambled to his feet. “Hate. Hate. Hate.” Then the fist holding the hair came up and slammed into his nose. The self-inflicted blow staggered him a step or two backwards, and twin streams of blood began to pour from his nostrils. I stood there immobile, stunned, as he punched himself again, this time right in the eye.

“Richard, stop!” I yelled and grabbed his wrists, holding his arms still.

When I made contact, a wave of loathing rolled over me and sank into my mind. It pricked and itched and pushed against my emotions, causing my bile to rise into my throat. Holding him was like being forced to touch something slimy, as if I’d put my hands on some unknown creature from the depths of my nightmares. Looking at him made me want to break him into pieces. I despised him. Abhorred him. The urge to hurt him grew greater with every second.

It took all my willpower to grit my teeth together and shove him away.

He stumbled backwards and hit the wall, sliding down to flop onto his side. He continued his mantra of resent, and—away from its influence—I realized what had happened. Daniel had used the device to remove Rocket’s immunity to his own power. But Richard’s power had been perverted.

His charisma field, which had made him well-liked and utterly convincing, was now an instrument for self-hatred. He had attacked himself—and nearly been attacked by me—because now, he was completely loathsome. The coercive power in it had also been cranked up several notches. It had caught me up in its influence along with him and I’d nearly injured him.

I glanced at the man on the floor. “I can’t leave you alone like this, boss. You might try to jump out the window or slit your wrists.” I walked over to one of the monitors, grabbed the data cables hanging out of the back, and yanked them free.

By the time I got back to Richard, he was banging his head repeatedly on the tile floor. I tied his arms tightly against his body as fast as I could—the dislike came back quickly—, and rolled him into a corner in the carpeted area. Then I bent a couple of dining chairs into a makeshift cage and secured the Good Guy’s leader so he couldn’t hurt himself any longer.

“Hang tight, Chief,” I said softly before I stalked off towards the stairs leading down to Daniel’s lab, determined to put an end to his betrayal.

When I approached the reinforced dura-steel door, I was positive I would have to break the damned thing down. I mean, I didn’t expect the evil mastermind to actually open the door and let me waltz right in to confront him.

Except, that’s exactly what happened.

I straightened my spine, put on my Saving-the-Day face, and strode into the laboratory as if I had every right to be there. Apparently I wasn’t the only person who felt that way. Leaning against one of the testing chambers just inside the room was the skinny, bright-green costumed form of Turbu-Lance. The Legion of Bedlam member grinned at me like he was privy to some secret joke. One that, most likely, I wouldn’t find funny.

“Hello, Lance,” I said. “If you have the slightest bit of common sense, and I may be overestimating your intelligence here, you’ll shuffle off and go do crime elsewhere.” I smiled as widely as I could. “I suggest another city.”

“Now, Karen,” Daniel said stepping into view. “That’s not a very nice thing to say to my guest.” He had changed out of the gray and blue uniform he’d worn to the hospital and into a solid black bodysuit that looked as if it were made out of some type of reinforced Kevlar. He stopped a few feet away and waved at me as if we were on a date.

“So, are you going to explain what this is all about?” I planted my hands on my hips, fingers spread wide. Showing my fists would have only put him on the defensive. “Or should I just chalk it up to you being crazy?”

He chuckled and pulled a stool over to sit on. “I’m impressed with the way you handled Richard. I thought you would just knock him out. Of course, once he woke up he would resume hurting himself.” His tongue made a clicking sound and I had a wonderful, fleeting daydream of ripping it from his mouth and shoving it up his nose.

I kept Lance in the corner of my vision as I looked at Daniel. “You used the bio-sequencer to alter the parameters of his charisma field. And you turned Robert into a Slip.” I shook my head and sighed. “Why? I mean, I get that you’re all evil and shit. But why do that to them?”

“Are you really asking me that?” He laughed and crossed his arms over his chest. “Of course, you’ve only been here a few weeks. You haven’t really had the chance to get to know your teammates all that well.”

I snorted. “And some, I guess, I didn’t really know at all.”

Daniel chuckled and pointed up at the ceiling. “Robert wasn’t ever going to believe you’d reformed or forgive you for knocking him out. He blames you for his fiancée dumping him.”

“What?”

“After that incident, he became a laughing stock. Our old group, Defense Incorporated, picked on him relentlessly. Apparently, his girl got tired of him taking his frustrations out on her, and she left him.” He shook his head. “Richard recruited him for the Good Guys out of pity. He shouldn’t have bothered, the man is too much of a wuss to be a real hero.”

“Facing Colossal would have been scary for anyone,” I countered. I might have been mad that Robert had refused to come to my aid, which had led Alexis to rush into the fight. However, the flyer wouldn’t have been much help against the behemoth.

“Don’t you dare defend him,” Daniel spat. “He sure as hell wouldn’t stand up for you.”

“And Richard? The man’s virtually harmless.”

“Harmless? Karen, the guy is a misogynistic asshole. He used his power to become disgustingly wealthy and to convince women who wouldn’t normally give him the time of day into sleeping with him. It’s just a half-step below mind control.” His smile took on a coldness I’d never guessed possible. “Now he hates himself as much as the rest of us do.”

I took a step towards Daniel. Lance shot a quick look over at his employer and then moved to stand between us. For a second, I was actually shocked he thought I couldn’t just walk through him. I cocked my head to the side, giving the villain a bemused smirk. “Really?”

He spread his arms and the air in the room began to circulate rapidly. “That’s as far as you’re going,” Turbu-Lance said with inflated bravado. The rushing vortex of air he’d generated made his words all distorted, like he was talking into a fan. “You can either step back, or be
blown
back!” he yelled.

I cut my eyes over his shoulder to look at Daniel. The smile on his face told me that he fully expected me to be the hero. So I reached out, pushing against the localized gale, until my hand was an inch from Lance’s forehead. He kept his arms spread, but his eyes crossed as they tried to see what I was doing. I couldn’t help but return Daniel’s smile as I flicked my finger. The sound of cracking bone was audible over the wind.

Lance’s eyes rolled back in his head and he dropped unconscious to the floor. Instantly, the mini-hurricane stopped, and only gently descending paper items—and my wind-blown hair—remained as evidence it had ever existed. I glanced down at the villain and placed the finger that had knocked him out against my lips.

“Shhhh,” I said softly. “Grown-ups are talking.” Then I looked over at Daniel and raised my eyebrows. “Care to guess who’s next?”

Daniel glanced down at the man on the floor and then back up to me. He laughed and held up a hand. “Wait,” he said. “Aren’t you forgetting someone?”

I looked around the lab slowly. “Where is Darla?”

“Bingo!” He said pointing at me. “Where is Darla?” He tapped his finger against his grinning lips. “Let’s talk about Omega-
Girl
, shall we? First of all, she’s a little older than she claims. She’s actually closer to thirty-five, not the twenty-five she tells everyone she is.”

“So, she should be punished for not calling herself Omega-Woman?”

“The point is, she lies. She’s vain, shallow, and manipulative.” There was a definitely venom in his voice.

He backed away until he was standing next to one of the huge cylinders. The observation windows were in their opaque mode, preventing me from seeing inside. Hiding what he’d done to our teammate. “Omega-Girl is solar powered, right? All of her abilities are fueled by sunlight. She even gets her nourishment from the sun.” He paused to make sure I was keeping up and then stepped over to the control panel on the side of the container. “What do you think happens when the genetic controls responsible for regulating that energy are shut off?”

My heart hammered hard in my chest as I followed his twisted train of logic. “If her cells can’t stop absorbing the energy,” I said, swallowing hard through a throat that had suddenly gone dry. “She would … take in too much.” I found I had no desire to see what was on the other side of the darkened glass. “She would … grow.”

He nodded slowly, pleased smile still in place, and flipped a switch causing the darkened glass to turn crystal clear.

The blonde girl was lying on the floor of the chamber, face-down. Even from where I stood several feet away, I could see that it was Darla … and then some. The emitters in the ceiling above her glowed a brilliant yellow, bathing her with a continuous stream of replicated sunlight. I didn’t need to move any closer to see that the athletic body of my teammate had vanished about forty dress sizes ago. If not for the built-in durability of her costume, she would have been completely naked. I guessed that she probably weighed almost half of what I did, only hers was due to girth, not molecular density.

Daniel kept his eyes on my reaction and reached back to rap his knuckles on the omni-plex window. “Not so hot any more, are you? Well, maybe you’ll be able to develop a real personality, since you can’t rely on your beauty to get people to like you.” He winked at me. “At least now there’s no question about who is the best looking girl on the team.”

I forced myself to look at Darla again, covering my hand with my mouth. Each obviously labored breath caused a chain reaction through the folds and rolls of pale flesh. The undulation made me shudder. “How much bigger are you going to make her?” I asked him.

“Oh, that’s about the maximum. I turned down the intensity of the solar radiation to keep her from metabolizing. Her legs can’t support all that flab, so there’s little chance of her smashing her way out. Hell, Omega-Tub will be lucky if she can even lift off the ground. Don’t want to kill her, you know. No, I just wanted to humiliate her.”

I turned back to him. “So, you turned the tables on the bullies. Bravo. You made the popular guy who picked on you unlikeable, the pretty girl who looked through you obese, and the hot-headed jock flammable. This isn’t an evil scheme, Daniel, it’s just petty high school revenge.” I shrugged. “What’s next? Going to punish me?”

He shook his head and patted the device on his wrist. “I’m not. I need more of your blood to keep my new toy working properly.” The smile that appeared made me want to take a shower.

“Oh, I think some bloodletting is definitely in order,” I said as I balled up my fists and took a step towards him.

“Besides, I think we’d make a pretty good team, don’t you?”

It wasn’t subtle. After the last syllable left his lips, I felt the sensation of phantom fingertips stoking inside my skull. If not for my training, I wouldn’t have even noticed they were there, massaging various parts of my brain, pushing neurons to flow in a particular pattern.

He’s not wrong. We would be pretty good together.

What the hell? I shook my head and took a step back. My hands curled into tight fists and I blinked a few times before turning my attention back to him. “What was that?”