The Indestructibles (8 page)

      "What you gonna do now?" the girl asked. "Lock me up like they did?"

      "No," Doc said. "You're free to come with us if you'd like."

      The girl studied him, her face hard, the shadows catching in her array of scars.

      "Thanks for the offer, Doc. But think I'll pass."

      "Where will you go?" Jane said. There was worry in her own voice that she hadn't intended or expected.

      "I got by okay before these guys found me," the girl said. "Should be okay on my own after."

      "But who were they?" Jane asked.

      "Why, you gonna go fight 'em?"

      "If we have to."

      The girl grinned. It looked almost painful with all the metal attached to her lower jaw.

      "In that case I wish I could tell you more, but . . . I don't know nothin'. All I remember before waking up here was the accident."

      "Accident?"

      The girl gestured at her body.

      "I'm not exactly off the shelf here, girlie," the cyborg said.

      "Solar. I'm Solar — Jane. My real name is Jane."

      The cyborg girl smiled again.

      "What was the name on my cell door?" she asked.

      "There wasn't a name."

      "What did it say?"

      "It said 'Bedlam.'"

      The cyborg nodded.

      "Well that'll do then," she said.

      "If you ever need us . . . " Jane said.

      The cyborg turned to leave, and looked back. She winked with her one human eye.

      "I bet you're pretty easy to find. Good luck out there, Jane."

      Bedlam ran along the shoreline. Her robotic feet changed shape to better grip the sand and increase her speed. Then, suddenly, she jumped. As if the ground held no power over her, Bedlam lifted off and flew in a long, high arc over the water. Jane squinted, watching her with superhuman vision, when she splashed down a mile away, then took off again, landing and taking off a second time even further away.

      Kate finally arrived.

      "This was a research facility," she said. "Most of the records were destroyed, but there's signs all over the place in there, Doc. Bad things were going on here."

      "I know," he said. He'd been watching Bedlam leave as well, but crouched down to check on Billy.

      "Is he dead?" Kate asked.

      "I'm not dead," Billy said. "Can head-butting someone be considered a type of flirting?"

Chapter 16:

Control

Agent Black guided the helicopter over to the secondary lab location without ever touching the controls.
A single cable snaked up out of the control panel and plugged directly into a port behind his left ear. With that in place, he sat back and directed the wasp-like vehicle with his eyes and thoughts. The machine swooped in low over tall trees and found the landing pad tucked away on the western facing side of a mountain that wasn't much more than a glorified rocky hill. The late day sun shattered across the horizon as they swooped up and over the rocks; the dampeners in Black's cybernetic eyes kicked in and compensated for the glare. There were times when he missed the human ability to be effected by daylight. It had been years since he'd needed sunglasses.

      They touched down. He looked back over his seat then unplugged himself from the chopper. Wegener, the scientist, appeared much recovered from the incident at the lab, a new pair of glasses on his face and the cuts and scrapes he endured during the escape treated and healing. None of this really mattered, though, as Wegener tried not to look at the looming shadow of Rose sitting across from him in her matte-black jumpsuit covered in assorted knives.

      "Relax, Doctor," Black said to him. "We didn't ship any of the pet monsters to this facility."

      "Just us," said Rose, smiling like a lunatic. She unbuckled Wegener. "Well, and one more monster, but you'll like her."

      She dragged him from the helicopter; one hand dug into his hair to keep him standing upright. Black slid out of the vehicle and followed.

      The entrance to the lab had been built right into the side of the mountain — two massive, Cold War era doors hiding all their secrets. Although the doors were open today, a squad of armed guards waited for them. These were Rose's boys, her ninjas, as Black liked to call them. Their employers hired both of them for a reason: one was muscle, the other a scalpel.

      "The Lady wants a word," one of Rose's men said.

      Of course the Lady wanted a word, Black wanted to say. She was the whole basis for them being called here in the first place.

      They led Wegener through a long corridor, hewed rough and unrefined out of existing rock, to a massive freight elevator. Down six stories they rode — Black's internal sensors alerted him to the depth above sea level the entire way — and then they were walked into a strangely extravagant waiting area nearby. Soft couches, expensive rugs, even the art on the walls all felt incredibly out of place here, but they knew it had once been a corporate research and development location, and those mundane forces had left their accoutrements behind.

      "I don't understand," Wegener said.

      "Just because we're in a cave doesn't mean we have to be savages," Rose said.

      "No, not the room . . . who are we working for? Who are we really working for?"

      "There's always someone trying to take over the world, Doctor," Black said. "All we're hoping to do is make sure we're being paid by the side with the largest operating budget."

      As he spoke, the Lady walked into the room, and, as always, all conversation stopped. Discussion always ceases when the Lady enters a room. She moved like royalty, even while simply clothed as she was today in a white button-down dress shirt and a knee-length black skirt. What she wore mattered very little. Her eyes glowed like lava and exuded a living trail of active flame so it was almost impossible to notice anything else. If you could look past her flaming eyes, she became the most elegant person you'd ever met — confident, regal, sharp-featured, and somehow mutable, as if her face changed slightly each time you stole a glance.

      Don't steal too many glances though, Black knew. If you caught her at the wrong moment, sometimes you would see great gleaming horns, fanged teeth, and skin the color of sunburn.

      The Lady was not their employer either, although she was much more than a simple hired pawn like Black or Rose. Agent Black didn't believe anyone could really hire the Lady. She traded in a higher currency than cash, which made Black wonder exactly what their employers had offered her to get her on board with this project.

      "Natasha," Rose said, and held out a hand.

      Both Rose and Black knew the Lady's first name, or at least the name she chose to be called. Neither were aware of any other way to address her.

      The Lady took Rose's hand with an easy smile. Not for the first time Black noticed the family resemblance. They could be siblings, or mother and daughter. Rose's ease around the Lady convinced him there was some greater connection than money that joined them.

      "Rose, darling. And my favorite professional murderer. Always good to see you, Agent," the Lady said.

      Black's stomach performed a little dance; it was nearly impossible to be unaffected by the Lady's presence, and even harder to do so when she turned on the charm. For some reason, she was always complimentary to him, and flirtatious in a completely non-threatening way, and Black was never able to figure out if this was simply her way of being friendly, or if it was a means of manipulation.

      For lack of anything better to do, he smiled and nodded an abbreviated hello. Complimentary and beautiful, still, she scared him to death.

      Wegener held onto one of the couches to steady his legs. The Lady is something you have to prepare for, Black knew. He gave the doctor credit for staying on his feet. Again, it wasn't her looks — she exuded an air of power, something predatory and infinitely dark.

      "You must be Doctor Wegener," she said. He nodded, mute. "You were the one who captured our pet storm."

      "I — I was, ma'am."

      "And the one who created the control methods that have been failing us?"

      Wegener tried to speak, but his mouth emitted only a dry, clicking noise.

      "Don't worry, Doctor. I'm not going to eat you. You've been brought here to explain to me how your control measures were intended to function, so I can help you bring them back online."

      "You're a . . . scientist?" Wegener asked.

      The Lady laughed — the sound of wind chimes.

      "Oh no, my friend," she said. "I'm who you call when science no longer works."

      The Lady draped an arm across his shoulder and led him out of the room. She turned back to look at Black and Rose.

      "We're just going to talk privately for a bit. You'll both be here when we return?"

      Black nodded.

      "Lovely," the Lady said. She winked at him with one burning eye and left, leading Wegener like a cow to the slaughter.

      "Are we going to be disposing of a corpse, or will she really bring him back?" Black asked.

      Rose shrugged.

      "Depends on whether she can understand what he tells her without opening up his brain. If he can explain his theories well enough, she won't kill him. She's not vindictive. She's just . . . "

      "Efficient."

      "Right," Rose said. "Did you see the surveillance footage from the old lab?"

      Black nodded.

      The Bedlam project had become an issue between Black and Rose. Rose wanted to put the girl out of her misery and Black, admittedly out of some sense of fellow cyborg loyalty, argued for keeping her online. The compromise was leaving her behind, but alive, as a kind of booby trap for whoever might come to investigate.

      "Interesting group that showed up," Black said.

      "They've got a dog boy," Rose said. "He's mine if we have a reason to confront them."

      Rose never talked about her issue with shapeshifters, but it wasn't a stretch to posit a few educated guesses. Her missing eye, after all, was surrounded by scar tissue which looked remarkably like claw marks.

      "They're kids. It'll be years before any of them is a real problem. The video looked like a bunch of toddlers in a bouncy castle."

      "Silence was with them," Rose said.

      "Yeah. You going to tell Natasha?"

      "If she wanted to know, she knows already," said Rose. "He's always been her favorite problem. It'll be her who deals with him, not us."

      "Not if we're caught without her in the field."

      Rose sat down on one of the plush couches, kicked her legs up, and leaned back languidly.

      Black followed her lead, choosing an armchair across from Rose.

      "You worried?" he said.

      "About Silence? Not at all. If he got the gang back together again they might be a challenge, but most of them are dead, off planet, or a hundred years into the future. They're not going to be a problem. You worried?"

      Black leaned back and closed his eyes, the optics on the false eye mimicking the biology of his real one.

      "I just think it's funny."

      "What's funny?"

      "That we're not the only ones trying to build a better monster."

Chapter 17:

A Game Plan

Whoever evacuated that base didn't do a great job," Kate said, dumping a broken laptop, a cracked external hard drive, and a pile of thumb drives onto the table in front of her.
She was still in costume, although she'd pulled her mask away from her face. Only recently too, because Titus saw red-rimmed lines where the material dug into her skin.

      Titus knew he had red lines on his face, also, but they were from the still healing bruises shaped like a cyborg fist. I've got to start fighting smarter, he thought. So far, I'm zero for two — a severe stabbing and a technical knockout.

      "Bedlam told us she wasn't alone," Jane said. "Do you think they kept files on the other test subjects?"

      "There were like, twenty rooms on that floor," Emily said. She'd wound that ridiculous scarf around her head like a peasant hood and sat in a chair, feet tucked up beneath her.

      "I checked them all out before we left," Titus offered. His own voice echoed. Doc let him know that most injuries he sustained as a werewolf would heal quickly, but he sure felt like he was fighting off a concussion right now. "There was evidence of occupancy in only nine of them. "

      "D'you think the storm has something to do with one of them?" Emily asked. "I mean like, is the storm actually one of the kids?"

      "We don't necessarily know they were all young people," Doc said. "Bedlam left before we could get any more information."

      "They were all kids," Billy offered.

      The cut across the bridge of his nose looked miserable and raw. It made Titus feel a little bit better that Bedlam had gotten the best of alien-boy too and that he wasn't the only incompetent hero in the bunch today.

      "How do you know?" Jane asked. "She didn't say anything about who they were."

      "It was her tone," Billy said. "She was talking about her peers when she referred to other test subjects."

      "You don't know that," Jane said.

      "I don't know it, but I
know
it. Trust me," Billy said.

      "Relying on your fellow-hoodlum instincts on this?" Jane said. Titus found her tone fascinating — she was, out of all of them, the least sarcastic, and the most even-keeled. Yet, something about Billy's behavior set her off. Titus wasn't entirely sure he liked it. As out of control as he knew himself to be, Titus appreciated the stability Jane usually brought to the table. The last thing they needed was her losing her cool.

      "Forget I said anything. Sorry," Billy said.

      Titus took a deep breath, not really ready to say what he had to contribute.

      "I can't be a hundred percent sure, but I, uh, can track scents, y'know, when I'm wolfing out? And, um," Titus let himself trail off.

      "You could tell by the scents in the room that there were young people locked up in there," Jane said. Calm. Kind. Understanding.

      "Either that or they used really young staff," Titus said, his tone apologetic. "For what it's worth."

      "You can smell people after they're gone?" Emily said. She'd gone bug-eyed, her nose wrinkled in disgust.

      "Yeah, I can."

      "That is fricken gross," Emily said. "And I thought my powers sucked. You really are cursed."

      "Thanks, Em."

      "In any case," Kate said. "I'd like to try to get whatever we can off these drives. I know a guy."

      Doc smiled. He always smiled when Kate decided to make a move on her own.

      "Done. Go for it."

      "I want to borrow Titus in case I need backup."

      "Borrow me?"

      "Fine," Kate said, flashing him a rare smile. "I'd like you to watch my back. Better?"

      Billy started to talk, but Kate pointed intimidatingly at him. He shut up instantly.

      "So what about the rest of us?" Billy asked.

      "I suggest everyone else hang back while Kate works her angle," Doc said.

      "That's cool, I've got a bunch of Netflix videos in queue anyway," Emily said, standing up.

      Jane caught Emily by the scarf before she left.

      "I want to see what's inside that storm," Jane said.

      "Well I'm not going with you, so let go of my scarf, s'il vous plâit," Emily said.

      "No way," Billy said.

      "Why not?" Jane shot back.

      "Because!"

      "What? You worried about me, Billy?" Jane said. "I'm invulnerable, remember?"

      "That is hyperbole. And, you can't punch a hurricane."

      "Doc?" Jane looked at Silence, who was taking in the entire exchange.

      "You want to try it, go for it," he said. "Don't go alone."

      "I'm coming with you," Billy said.

      "I'm watching TV," Emily said.

      "The hell you are," Billy said. "If I'm her back up, you're mine."