Just Cause

  Chapter Twenty

  “Whoa. I didn’t expect that to happen!”

  -Crackerjack, Saturday Night Live, March 13, 1999

  February, 2004

  Porto San José, Guatemala

  Night settled over the coastal town like a heavy, wet blanket. A storm front had moved across the region, trailing thick moist clouds that trapped the heat of the day. Glimmer kept a psionic eye out for anyone who might observe the group as they hiked out of town, away from anyone who might see. Once they were well clear of town, Stacey ordered them all to change into their nighttime suits.

  “No peeking, Sally.” Jack whispered at her from behind a tree as he changed.

  “Please, you’re like old enough to be my father,” she said. “Are you taking Viagra yet?”

  Muffled snickers came from Glimmer, and she thought she even heard a snort of amusement from the dour Doublecharge.

  “Definitely spending too much time with Sondra.” Jack tightened his equipment belt as he stepped out from behind the tree. With his face blacked out and a black skullcap over his hair, he looked like a living shadow.

  “This is pretty much your element, isn’t it?” Sally eyed his matte-finish weapons. She counted at least four guns and three knives before she stopped.

  “It’s a living.” He smiled, teeth white against his darkened face.

  Doublecharge and Glimmer added military-issue Kevlar vests over their black suits. Sally had one as well, but she hadn’t put it on. Jack offered to help her adjust the fasteners.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Isn’t there already armor built into my suit? How can I run in this thing if I can’t move right?”

  “Can you actually see bullets coming at you?” Doublecharge asked.

  “Most of the time,” Sally said.

  “Most of the time,” Doublecharge repeated. “Put it on and keep it on. That’s an order.” She coiled her blonde hair up and tucked it under her skullcap. It took a little extra work, but they managed to get Sally’s braids wrapped around her head and covered as well. “Think you can find your way back to the compound from here, Sally?” Doublecharge asked as she smeared black across her forehead and cheeks.

  Sally looked around. The jungle was pitch-black with the stars covered by the thick clouds. The only light at all came from the pale smudge of the obscured moon. “I don’t know. I think so. I wish Diego was here to guide us.”

  “I wish I had a tank with GPS and a cappuccino machine,” said Jack.

  “Jay, can you help her?”

  The telepath nodded and connected with her to trace out a firm map in her mind. When she closed her eyes, she could refer to it and found it like having a You are here light in her head. “Okay, yeah, I can find it from here. What now?”

  “We move. Jay is slowest, he’ll set the pace. We’ll rest after thirty minutes or when we get halfway there, whichever comes first.” Doublecharge flew a few feet into the air and hovered, waiting. Glimmer closed his eyes and levitated both himself and Jack off the ground. They all looked at Sally.

  “This way.” She chose the path and led the others along it at—for her—a slow jog.

  In a few minutes, Jack stopped her and handed her a pair of night-vision goggles. “They’re not much,” he said, “but it’s better than tripping over every tree root in the dark.” The goggles gave everything a bright green tint and made Sally feel like she’d slipped into a video game.

  They climbed the route that Sally and Diego had followed earlier in the day. Glimmer couldn’t levitate much faster than Diego’s dirt bike, so it took almost as long as it had before. She stopped them at the volcanic ridge she remembered and they took a short break. Jack passed out some nutrient bars to everyone, and Sally was surprised by how delicious they tasted.

  “Make ‘em myself,” he said. “Can’t tell you what’s in them. Trade secret. Besides, if you knew, you wouldn’t want them.”

  “Microphone checks, everyone,” said Doublecharge. They all tested their throat mikes and earbud speakers. “Normally under these circumstances we’d operate using Jay as a psionic switchboard,” she said to Sally, “but he’s uncomfortable with that so close to the target area.”

  “It’s all the evidence of psionic activity in the area,” Glimmer said. “With that big-time psi here, I bet there are booby traps in half the minds of San José.”

  “You’re no slouch in the mental powers department yourself, Jay,” Jack said. “You really think this mystery psi is that bad?”

  “Yes I do.”

  “Whatever the case,” said Doublecharge, “I don’t want these radios used except in an emergency. With Destroyer involved in this operation, we can’t trust that our signals will be secure, even with encryption. Use hand signals whenever possible.”

  “I don’t really know any hand signals,” said Sally.

  “Don’t worry, neither do we,” said Jack. “Except the old standby.” He raised his middle finger in salute. “But seriously, they’re very straightforward. This means come here, this means get down . . . look . . . go there . . . and take him down.” He showed a series of simple gestures to Sally that ended with a finger drawn across his throat.

  “Okay, I think I can remember that.” She shuddered, wondering if Jack’s idea of take him down was more permanent than hers.

  “All right, it’s time to go,” said Doublecharge. “The most important thing is we stay safe. If anything goes sour, the standing order is to bug out. This thing is bigger than any of us. It’s only a matter of time before we’re found out, and we need to get as much information about this facility as we can.”

  They traveled on through the midnight jungle until they found the clearing that overlooked the compound. A few sentries walked or floated on patrol duty. The compound was well lit by powerful floodlights, which made an unobtrusive approach seem impossible. Jack watched the compound carefully for almost an hour to examine the patrol patterns and habits of those who walked them.

  “Okay,” he said at last. “On my mark, follow me in. We’re going straight across to the near corner of that building.” He pointed to the target. “Stealth mode from here on out. Watch yourselves and be ready for anything.” He handed pistols to everyone.

  “What do I do with this?” Sally whispered. “I never took any firearms classes at the Academy.”

  “Safety’s here.” Jack showed her the switch. “It’s on. Don’t touch it. Parahuman powers aren’t always obvious, the locals might not speak English, but everybody understands a gun. If there’s going to be any shooting, it’ll be by me.”

  Sally nodded and hefted the unfamiliar weapon. Jack sighed and adjusted her grip on it so it at least looked like she’d held one before.

  “Ready? Okay, go.”

  The quartet crossed the clearing and reached the cinderblock building without incident. Jack peeked over the edge of a window and then ducked back down. He motioned for the others to follow him. They advanced along the side of the building to a metal door. Jack took a device out of a vest pocket and quickly ran it across the edges of the door to check for electrical current. Satisfied with the results, he checked the handle to see if it was locked. The knob turned without a hitch and they slipped inside.

  They found themselves in a storeroom filled with cases of personal hygiene supplies. “It’s a dorm,” whispered Jack, “but it looks empty. All these boxes are sealed.”

  “That means they’re either planning on more people arriving,” said Doublecharge. “Or more troops being made.”

  They all froze as they heard a door open and footsteps outside the storeroom. Jack glanced at Glimmer, who had his eyes shut in concentration. He opened them and held up three fingers.

  Shit, mouthed Jack.

  Outside, they heard slurred conversation in a language that might have been Spanish with a strong tequila accent. Jack wrapped his hand around the storeroom door’s knob and turned it. The only noise it made was a twang of the spring inside the mechanism. He cracked open
the door and peeked out. Then he looked at Sally and drew a finger across his throat.

  How? she mouthed back at him.

  He rolled his eyes, grabbed Glimmer and turned him around. Then Jack reversed a pistol, touched the butt to a spot on the back of Glimmer’s head, and looked at Sally to see if she understood. She nodded. He raised his hand, held up three fingers, and gave her a countdown.

  When his last finger dropped, he yanked on the door and the world shifted into slow time as Sally ran into the dormitory itself. She saw three soldiers sitting on bare mattresses, smoking cigarettes and passing a bottle back and forth. One of them had skin that looked like blue candle wax.

  She swung the pistol into the first man’s head. His eyes rolled up and he started to slump forward. Sally grabbed his bottle as it started to fall and set it out of the way so it wouldn’t break. The second man just started to turn his head as Sally clocked him. She turned her attention to the waxy-skinned soldier.

  When she hit him, the pistol butt sank several inches into his flesh, which started to flow like thick mud. Sally gasped as it enveloped her hand before she could pull away. She couldn’t free herself and muffled a shriek as her hand started to burn like it had been dipped in strong acid. In slow motion, the door to the storage room swung open and the others rushed out.

  Tears of pain ran unchecked down Sally’s blackened face. The guard’s entire body shifted and moved like liquid plastic as it crawled up her arm. Jack tried to pull her free, but to no avail.

  Electricity crackled between Doublecharge’s hands with a sound like paper tearing. Teeth clenched in fury, she placed her hands on either side of the guard’s head and let him have a huge jolt. His strange, polymer body insulated Sally from the electricity. A ripple flowed through him and he released Sally. She fell to the ground and held her hand in pain.

  “Bastard.” Doublecharge growled, upped the voltage and gave him another concentrated blast. The guard toppled into a quivering puddle and remained still.

  “Let me see your hand, Sally.” Jack pulled a medical kit off his waist. The skin was raw and blistered. He clucked his tongue in sympathy and spread burn cream over the injury.

  “I’m sorry, Sally,” said Doublecharge as she checked the other guards. “I should know better than to have you taking point with your inexperience.”

  “I can handle it.” Sally winced at the sting.

  “How is she?”

  “Looks like some kind of acid burn.” Jack as he wound a bandage around Sally’s hand. “It’s good we got to her when we did.” He smiled at Sally. “My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.”

  “Animal House,” she said with a sniffle. “I love that movie. What do we do now?”

  Doublecharge looked at the guards. “Search them.”

  Glimmer complied with her request and turned up some basic personal effects and three key cards. “Think these will get us into the main building?”

  “We’ll find out,” said Doublecharge. “Strip their uniforms off. We’ll try a more direct approach.”

  “Good,” said Jack as he withdrew some zip-tie binders from a pocket. “I prefer a straight fight to all this sneaking around.”

  “Star Wars,” said Glimmer. “Even I remember that one. You’re on a roll.”

  “You’re pissing me off,” said Doublecharge. “Stay on task so nobody else gets hurt. These two soldiers we’ll lock in the storage room. Jay, see to it they don’t wake up anytime soon. Jack, can you find something to pour this other guy into?”

  Jack shrugged and vanished into the storage room, to return a moment later with a large footlocker. “He might get out of this eventually,” he said of the gelid puddle. “But he’ll have to work at it, if he’s even alive. How do you check Jell-o for vital signs?”

  “Well, scoop him in, Mr. Invulnerability,” said Doublecharge, “and you’re wearing his uniform when you’re done.”

  In a few minutes, Jack, Doublecharge, and Glimmer had dressed in the three guards’ uniforms. Jack passed around a packet of baby wipes to the others so they could clean the black off their faces. “Best cleaning supplies ever,” he said with a cheerful grin.

  “What about me?” Sally asked.

  “Not much we can do. These guys were twice as big as you. Maybe we can find a smaller guard somewhere,” Doublecharge said. “In the meantime, we’ll take the overt risks and you follow when the coast is clear. Jack, what’s the time?”

  “Almost midnight,” he said. “Think they’re going to do a shift change?”

  “Let’s wait and see.”

  They watched out the windows of the dormitory, careful to remain in the shadows. Sure enough, outlying guards climbed or flew down from their towers and others came in from the perimeters. Replacements exited the dorms, yawning and flexing stiff muscles.

  “Grab something to carry. We’re going to go straight across to the power station,” said Doublecharge. She picked up a box of supplies.

  “Why carry something?” Sally asked.

  “Old tricks always work the best,” said Jack. “If you act like you’re supposed to be somewhere when you’re not, and you carry something appropriate in a purposeful way, people tend not to notice you.” He picked up a clipboard that he found hanging by the door. “This thing is like a free pass to anywhere.”

  “We’ll signal you when it’s clear to come across,” said Doublecharge to Sally, and opened the door.

  They walked across the hard-packed clay toward the entrance to the power station. Nobody stopped them or even seemed to pay any attention to the three heroes. At the door, Jack swiped the keycard he’d taken from the guards. Sally held her breath and it seemed like eternity before the green light on the security box clicked on. The meter-thick door slid sideways into the frame.

  Doublecharge looked back in Sally’s direction and nodded. Sally bolted across twenty yards of open space in the blink of an eye and skidded to a stop just inside the corridor as the door slid shut. She glanced around and saw a security camera behind a Lexan bubble.

  “Oh, shit!” She ducked.

  Jack smiled. “No problem.” He held up a small device. “Already took care of it with this little baby.”

  “Geez, this guy’s like Santa Claus,” Sally said to Glimmer. “Now what?”

  “We go further in,” said Doublecharge. “Until we find out what this place is for or we can’t get any further with these.” She held up a key card for emphasis. “Sally, you make sure our back is clear. You’re fast enough to take down anyone who sees us before an alarm can be raised.”

  They passed through the corridor into a nexus. The interior of the building was much smaller than the exterior, which implied a great thickness of shielding. Glimmer mentioned the discrepancy.

  “Yeah, it’s making me pretty uncomfortable,” said Jack. “Like I might be about to find out the one thing I’m not invulnerable to is an uncontrolled nuclear reaction.”

  The doors from the nexus were labeled in both English and Spanish. One led to the Control Room, one to the Holding Cells, one to Medical and the last to the Reaction Chamber.

  “I don’t see any sign of more security measures,” said Jack after he checked the room. “Maybe they’re not expecting anyone to sneak into a camp full of armed parahumans.”

  “You don’t believe that any more than I do,” said Doublecharge. “The Control Room is where we’re most likely to find an answer. There should be more people in here. I don’t like this one bit. Why would there be access into a reaction chamber?”

  Nobody could answer her. Weapons drawn, they opened the door that led to the Control Room. A short corridor ended in a rising stairwell. Jack took the point as they advanced. The stairs ended in another door. Jack put his ear to it, eyes closed in concentration.

  “I don’t hear anything at all. But if this is another foot-thick door, I wouldn’t. Jay, anything?”

  Glimmer shook his head. “I can’t sense anyone.”

  “Why would a control
room for a nuclear reactor be abandoned?” Jack asked. “Is Destroyer so bright that he can build one that runs itself?”

  “Maybe,” said Doublecharge. “Be on your guard. I think this is a trap.”

  “Then why are we still here?” whispered Sally.

  Jack smiled. “Because we’re Just Cause, babe. It’s just what we do.”

  He swiped the card and a motor hummed as the door slid into the wall. Beyond was a semicircular room lined with banks of computers and thick windows. Although they saw several duty stations, the room was empty of people.

  Jack stepped forward to look out the windows. “You’d better see this,” He had a funny note in his voice.

  The others moved up to see what he did. Below them stretched a long, open room lined with metallic cots with manacles at each corner. A thick layer of ash coated the floor. Greasy soot blackened the walls and edges of the observation windows, which were smudged as if they’d been wiped without much regard for perfectionism. At the far end of the room, they saw a heavy industrial door marked with the universal symbol for radioactivity.

  “What the hell is this?” Doublecharge asked.

  Glimmer motioned to a console that looked like a video monitor. Jack stepped up to it and played with the controls for a few moments. “Ah, here we go,” he said as words filled the screen.

  24-February 2004

  Test #0117

  Subjects: 102

  Rads: 7,500

  Duration: 3.0 seconds

  The words were replaced by four video images of different angles from the interior of the room below. They saw people chained down to each of the bed frames. Most struggled; many screamed in fear. Figures wearing radiation suits bustled through the room, checked locks, and set up equipment. A digital readout in the corner showed a countdown of two minutes. As the clock wound down toward zero, the suited figures evacuated the room to leave only the men and women in the beds. When the clock ticked down to five seconds, the large door at the end of the room slid into the roof, which revealed a complex apparatus glowing with unholy radiance. At 0:00 a bright flare emitted from the device that lasted for three seconds and blanked out all video screens.

  When the cameras came back online, several seconds later, all the bed frames were empty and fresh ashes swirled through the room. A few seconds later, the recording ended.

  “Oh my God!” Sally whispered.

  Jack tapped a control and a compact disc ejected from the machine. He handed it to Sally. “Here,” he said, his voice rough. “You take this. You have the best chance of getting it out of here if things go badly.”

  “Let’s go,” said Doublecharge. “We’re pushing our luck as it is.”

  They returned to the lobby below.

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Jack said.

  The large door slid open and they found themselves face-to-face with what looked like the entire camp with scores of weapons leveled at them. Some soldiers’ fists glowed with various deadly energies.

  Sally spun around and saw more soldiers crouched in the doorways of the lobby, likewise armed and ready for anything.

  Heinrich Kaiser stepped into the ring of soldiers, followed by the ancient black man who hobbled with his cane and cackled quietly to himself. Kaiser sized them up with the air of an entomologist who regarded particularly choice insects pinned to a card. “Old tricks always work the best, Mr. Raymond. Wasn’t that what you said?”

  With a whine of servomotors, Destroyer stepped around from the edge of the power station. “You Just Cause losers are so predictable,” he said. “Drop your guns and don’t move.”

  Jack gave a wry half-grin. “Well, which is it, drop our guns or don’t move? They’re mutually exclusive actions, smart guy.”

  “You know what I mean, Mr. Raymond,” said Kaiser.

  Jack and the others dropped their guns. A soldier teleported to the heroes, collected the weapons, and then popped back to the others in a series of rapid reports like gunfire.

  “How’d you catch us?” Jack asked.

  “Him,” said Jay through clenched teeth as he glared at the old man with the cane.

  “Bertram has been with me for many years,” said Kaiser. “He is very skilled at psionic disciplines. More so, I believe, than you, Mr. Road. He has kept you from seeing our true movements since you came to the camp.”

  “How’d you even know we were here?” Sally asked. A figure stepped out from behind the blond man.

  Diego.

  White hot fury filled Sally which blinded her to everything but the smiling boy. She took a step forward. A sudden pain ripped through her entire body and made her gasp in agony. The icy burning was strong enough to double her over.

  “Stop it! Leave her alone!” shouted Jack.

  “Don’t move, Crackerjack!” Destroyer said. “You might be bulletproof, but your friends aren’t!”

  “Bertram, please,” said Kaiser. “That’s not really necessary.”

  The old man licked his lips with a gray tongue. “A lesson must be taught. She will join us eventually, as will they all, Heinrich. I will see to that.”

  A voice in Sally’s mind cut through the pain, like a spot of pure white on a red wall. In spite of the agony, she locked eyes with Glimmer. Sally . . . run!

  Time shifted into the syrupy slowness of accelerated perceptions. She tried to scream “No!” at him, but it felt like her vocal cords were frozen.

  Glimmer’s head turned and his eyes focused upon the old man. His brow furrowed and the pain wracking Sally’s body vanished. He grunted with effort and his eyes turned blood red as capillaries burst throughout them. Something powerful passed across the intervening distance to Bertram from Glimmer, with an anticlimactic effect. Bertram’s eyes rolled up in his head and he toppled. Blood poured from his ears and nose.

  At the speed of thought: Sally . . . run!

  Sally pushed herself to her feet and ran to the edge of the clearing before she dared glance back. Destroyer’s guns roared with a sound like thunder to her accelerated senses. She averted her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see the exploding shells tear Glimmer apart.

  Flame blossomed under Destroyer’s boots as he took to the sky in pursuit of Sally. She saw a familiar flash as Diego transformed into the bullet-fast winged snake and raced toward her like an organic missile.

  Half-blinded by her own tears, Sally turned and ran into the dark jungle, frantic to find the road. She dodged past shadowy tree trunks and mercifully avoided stepping in any more holes. In a few seconds she found herself at the road which led back to Porto San José. She glanced back and saw a distant rising star in the darkness that must have been Destroyer. Movement flashed in the corner of her eye and she ducked backward as the Quetzalcoatl’s razor-sharp tail lanced through the air her head had occupied a moment before.

  Sally dodged the winged serpent as it pursued her, hissing and spitting. The tail flashed so fast that even with her sped-up vision she could hardly see it. She stepped on a loose rock in the road and lost her balance. The tail flashed downward toward her eye and she barely jerked her head aside in time. The razor-sharp tail cut a stinging bloody furrow down her cheek instead.

  She rolled and twisted to avoid the tail as it whipped at her with dangerous ferocity. She scrabbled across the road, desperate for a tree branch or anything she could use as a weapon. Her fingers closed around a fist-sized rock and she swung it at the serpent with all her might. She missed its head, but connected solidly with one wing. Diego whirled in midair to try to stay in flight, but he lost all momentum. Sally saw her opportunity. In a blur, she grasped his tail, whipped him around with a strength she didn’t know she had, and smacked him into the ground. Her other fist looped down and smashed the stone into the snake’s belly with a sickening crunch.

  Light flashed and she was straddling a naked Diego in an obscene parody of lovemaking. She recoiled and rolled backward and leaped to her feet, ready to fight again. He didn’t move and drew a ragged, forced breath.
She stepped closer, stone raised should she need it.

  One of his arms twisted at an unnatural angle; a shocking white knob of bone protruded from the place his forearm met his elbow. His broken torso looked as if it had been ripped apart and then sewn back together with crude, uncaring hands. He was dying in the most painful way Sally could imagine.

  “Señorita,” he whispered through the blood that bubbled on his lips. “Help me . . .”

  “I liked you.” Sally found her voice. “I even trusted you, you little shit. And you lied to me. You lied to all of us! My friend is dead because of you!”

  “Not my fault.” He coughed.

  A distant sound made her raise her head. The star that was Destroyer had developed several bright trails of flame and smoke that rushed in on her position.

  She felt like she should have said something to Diego, but there was no time left. She bolted down the road only a second before the missiles converged on the site. A tremendous explosion tore through the nighttime sky. The heat washed across her back as she fled. She couldn’t trust anyone in San José. She didn’t know anyone else, and could only think of one place to go.