“What is this really about?” Celia demanded. “Are you pissed off at me taking over a city you don’t even live in, or are you just mad you haven’t been able to do it yourself?”
Majors paused his pacing, and Celia turned out to be right about him: He was so assured of his own righteousness, he’d be happy to explain himself to her, to demonstrate the justice of his cause.
“You’re well known, even in Delta. But I see through you, I see what you’re really doing. We’re here to save Commerce City from you—from itself and its own misguided worship of you.”
What an astonishing picture of her he painted. Had he actually read the Commerce Eye?
“So what’s your power?” Celia asked. “I’m very curious—you know enough about superhumans to be able to identify them, gather them together. I’m just wondering how you did. How you knew. Where did you all come from? Do you even know how you got your powers?” She directed this last at the mentalist.
“I was born with them,” he said. “We all were.”
“Mindwall, be quiet,” Majors ordered.
“Ah,” she said. If a lab accident could create all of Commerce City’s superhumans, no doubt a similar series of events could do the same elsewhere. Or a previously unidentified descendant of the Layden Labs experiment had moved to Delta and been very prolific. She should be able to follow up and find out. Assuming she got out of this. The possibilities turned circles in her mind.
“Mindwall. It must have been tough, growing up. Knowing you were different but not knowing exactly why. How do you even discover a power like yours? Did you know any telepaths, any other mentalists? By the way, do you know who else could block telepathy? I mean, I don’t know if he could actively block, but Dr. Mentis was never able to read his mind. The Destructor, Simon Sito. You’re not related to him by any chance, are you?”
Majors rounded on her. “Shut up, or I’ll gag you.”
“Yeah, we usually get to that point in the kidnapping right about now.”
She’d thrown out a connection with the Destructor as a lark, but now she wondered. Not all of Sito’s time as Commerce City’s most dangerous supervillain was accounted for. Had he spent time in Delta? The mentalist—Mindwall, really?—was sweating, his face puckered in horror. Odd guy out, she was guessing, just like Dr. Mentis. Nobody ever trusted mental powers.
“Danton? We’re back,” a woman’s voice called from the hallway. The figure in green must have gotten out of the way in time.
The two strode in looking flustered and a bit singed around the edges. Which meant Suzanne had gotten involved, and wouldn’t that have been something to see. Celia would have to make a crack about them getting beaten down by the grandma.
The man had a bruise covering his cheek, and his scowl was marred by a split lip. “The building’s surrounded by cops.”
“I don’t care about the cops, how many of their superhumans are here?” The man and woman, Shark and Sonic, glanced at each other, neither one answering. So they didn’t know. Danton clenched his hands; he was starting to lose it. “Well, somebody blew something up down there.”
Sonic, eager, bounced in preparation of running. “We’ll go see—”
“No. Shark, you go see. Call me when you know something. After that, we let the traps take care of it. When—if—they get within range of Mindwall’s blocks, then we’ll finish them.”
“What is the range of Mindwall’s blocks?” Celia asked casually. Just to see if they would brag.
They didn’t. And the guy in green stayed quiet and out of sight. If all he could do was jump real high, he couldn’t really help anyway.
The waiting was the hardest part of being kidnapped. Especially when she knew something was happening and she couldn’t do a thing about it, tied to a chair. She sweated under her suit jacket and couldn’t scratch. Just fidget to get the kinks out of her muscles and wiggle her fingers and toes to keep them from falling asleep. The moment had the feeling of a chess game, about three moves before checkmate. The pieces all slipping into place and nothing left to do but regret the moves you didn’t make.
“You can stop this all right now,” Danton Majors said, stepping around to the front of her chair, leaning over her. “I’ve got the documents ready to go, all you have to do is sign, and you can walk out of here and stop this.”
His leaning over her was an obvious dominance posture that was meant to leave her cowering, cringing away from him, ducking her face to avoid him breathing on her. She let him breathe on her and never blinked.
“I don’t sign anything without having my lawyers examine it first.”
“Your lawyers don’t need to examine this.”
She clicked her tongue. “It’s always the fucking con artists who say that. Blow up the whole building around me if you want, I’m not signing.”
Majors’s phone beeped, and he answered it, stepping away from Celia. Listened for what seemed a long time. He glanced sidelong at Celia. “Right. You’ve got a look at the surveillance? Holding the ground floor was a long shot anyway … so they’re in the stairwell now … How many of them? Cops? Okay. And kids? The teenagers—how many of them?” His grin was evil. “Anna West-Mentis is there, too? And Dr. Mentis? All right, then. Just watch, and keep me updated.”
He put the phone away. “They won’t make it this far. They’ll probably be hurt in the process. Badly hurt. You can stop that.”
The nausea in her gut choked her. What were Arthur and Anna even doing, walking into a combat zone where their powers wouldn’t do any good? They should know better than that. Celia kept her smile smug, her gaze terror-free. “You’re the one with your finger on the trigger.”
“You’ve lost, Celia West.” He rounded on her, fist clenched. “You’ve lost!”
At this point, not saying anything would enrage him more than any snippy comeback. So she sat there, silent, gazing on him with as much pity as she could muster.
TWENTY-TWO
ANNA quickly located Teddy, sprawled out asleep on the bottom step in the emergency stairwell behind the elevators. When Dr. Mentis psychically knocked out everybody on the ground floor, he really knocked out everybody.
“He should wake up easily. Just shake him a bit,” her father said.
“Teddy, wake up, come on, we don’t have time for this.” It seemed cruel, but she grabbed his chin and shook, and was about to move on to a good solid slap when he groaned and brushed her away.
“Wassit?” he mumbled.
Lew got to his other side and the two helped him sit up.
“Ow,” he said, resting his head in his hands. “What happened?”
“Sorry about the headache,” Arthur said, though the faint smile he wore didn’t seem very apologetic. “I’ve never been able to reduce the side effects.”
Paulson’s men arrested and cleared out the hired thugs. There’d been some argument about what they could be arrested for; they hadn’t made any attacks, the building was private property so technically they couldn’t be subject to any weapons charges. Paulson decided on obstruction of justice with more charges pending and had them all arrested on principle. Mentis examined a couple of them, but all any of them seemed to know was that they’d been hired to protect the building—not by whom, and not why. So that didn’t help much. They knew there were further security measures upstairs, but again they didn’t know exactly what.
Anna tried getting Bethy on the headset, but the thing had gone dead. On a hunch, she ran back outside. “Bethy?”
“Anna? Are you there? Can you hear me?”
“The radio went dead inside the building, away from the doors. I don’t think I’m going to be able to keep in touch with you.” She wouldn’t be able to keep in touch with anyone else, either.
“So I really am freaking useless,” she muttered.
“No, you’re not,” Anna said. “Go to the hospital and stay with Grandma, she needs you. Take your cell phone, I’ll call when I can.”
“Have you found Mom y
et?”
“No. But soon, I think.” The building was so well defended, Mom had to be here.
Bethy swallowed hard, and her voice trembled. “I love you, Anna.”
This was no time to be tearing up; Anna scrubbed her eyes. “I love you, too. I’ll call you soon.” She hoped she’d call her soon.
They gathered around the elevators and looked up at the ceiling, as if they had X-ray vision and could see through solid matter to better plan their next moves.
“May I suggest that we not take the elevators?” Arthur said.
They started climbing the stairs, along with a handful of Paulson’s SWAT team. They almost had an army. The stairs were concrete, and steel railings crawled upward around a tall shaft, a tower that felt simultaneously claustrophobic and expansive. The walls felt like they were closing in, but just a few floors up she could lean over the railing, spit, and watch the glob sail downward forever.
“We still don’t know where exactly in the building Celia is, do we?” Analise said. They were strung out, curving around to the third landing. Anna didn’t know how she felt about Teia and Lew’s mom tagging along. But when she thought about Typhoon tagging along—well, that was different.
“Anna,” her father said, “can you sense her or are you still blocked?”
She paused, leaned against the railing, and focused that inner, unerring compass on her mother. Celia still showed as a blank. More than absent. As an afterthought, she tried to find Eliot—and he’d vanished from her awareness as well. Farther up the building was a psychic bubble keeping her locked out. This must be driving her father bananas.
“Nothing,” she said with a sigh. “But I think we should start with the thirtieth floor. That’s where we scouted before.”
Teddy looked at her. “You scouted here already? When?”
“Over the weekend, we had to get some information—”
“What we?” Understanding dawned, and he scowled. “You went out with the Green Gizzard, didn’t you? Why didn’t you call me? I could have helped—
She glared. “Green Gizzard? What does that even mean?”
Paulson snorted suppressed laugher. “We’ve been calling him the Weasel.”
Arthur said, “As in ‘Pop Goes the’? That’s inspired.”
Eliot was going to hate that. Anna had a feeling this was the name that was going to stick. Well, that was what he got for not coming up with his own.
Arthur said, “Captain, what are we likely to find as we move on?”
“Anything. Everything. I don’t know. Automatic firing mechanisms, explosives, trapdoors. Think of the worst the old Olympiad faced and ratchet it up a few notches? This is someone who knows your MO after all, to be blocking your power.”
“That’s what has me worried. Ghost, how do you feel about scouting on a bit more stealthily?”
“What, me? Yeah, sure.” Settling a determined frown on his features, Teddy raced ahead and vanished.
Anna resisted shouting after him to slow down and be careful.
They passed the sixth landing. Anna really ought to start working out. Teia, Lew, and Sam obviously worked out. They were pulling ahead. Anna probably could have chased after them but found herself lingering near her father.
“Kids, slow down!” Analise called as the Trinity climbed farther ahead, passing even the SWAT officer Paulson had put in the lead. “God, to have that kind of energy again.”
Arthur held out an arm. “Everyone, stop. Be quiet.”
It seemed impossible that the whole crowd of them could be quiet. Anna held her breath, trying to hear what her father obviously listened to, his head tilted, focused.
“It’s gas,” Analise murmured. Anna heard it then, a hissing, as if several helium tanks were filling balloons at once. The sound came from somewhere above them. Her nose started tickling, which might have been her mind playing tricks. She held her breath, just in case, but that would last only so long.
The stairwell started to fill with a pale orange-tinged fog.
“Is that knockout or poison?” Analise asked.
“Doesn’t matter, we’ve got to move,” Paulson stated, pushing his SWAT guy back down the stairs. “Get out of here, get gas masks—”
Above them, Lew leaned over the railing, his hands outstretched. Somewhere far overhead, a vent grating started rattling. A harsher blowing of air overcame the hissing, and what started as a slight draft quickly swelled to a gale. Anna and the rest of the party hunched over, bracing as the wind carried away dust, debris, scraps of paper all the way from the building’s lobby, drawing it spiraling up along the stairs and away. The blast of wind thundered upward for several minutes, carrying the poisonous fog with it. Finally, the wind faded, the air stilled. Teia held on to Lew, who slumped on the railing, drained. But the stairwell was clear, the air fresh. The gas nozzles had stopped hissing, presumably after running empty.
“Wow,” Analise murmured. Her smile seemed wistful.
That would be only the first of the traps.
Braced against the railing, Paulson was shaking his radio, not getting a signal. “Damn it. This whole situation is ridiculous. You”—he slapped one of his SWAT guys on the shoulder—“go back downstairs, get the tech guys to shut off power to the whole building. It’s probably not even on the grid, so tell them to go into the basement and look for generators. And watch for traps.” Paulson sighed, and the wrinkles on his worried brow seemed even deeper. “If I’d known we had a fortress sitting in the middle of the city all this time, I’d have shut it down.”
“Save it for later, Captain. Let’s keep moving.”
“My heart is not going to thank me for this,” he muttered.
“If you need to stay—”
“No. I’m fine. Let’s go.”
About ten floors up, the stairs gave out. One minute Anna stood on solid floor; the next, the floor had dropped, the individual stairs collapsing into a seamless ramp that curved endlessly downward. Letting out a yelp, she rolled a few feet before managing to grab the railing.
The chaos seemed to go on for a long time. Startled shouts echoing, the scraping as one of the SWAT guys, thrown off balance by his gear, tumbled all the way down. Arm wrapped around the railing, clinging, Anna was able to survey the damage. Even the landings had tilted, offering no safe haven on the now impossible stairs. Paulson had slipped down to the next flight before stopping himself; Teia and Lew clung to each other. Analise had already been hanging on the railing and managed to stay upright, bracing now to keep from falling. Arthur had stabilized by pushing up against the wall.
“Is everyone all right?” Arthur called. Which was weird—he should have been able to just know, reaching out to them with his mind. Which meant—
She looked for Teddy and couldn’t find him. Even if he’d been far ahead of the rest of them, even invisible, she should have been able to sense him. But she just couldn’t tell. She closed her eyes, and the world became a blank, all her friends and family invisible to her. She opened them again quickly, lest the vertigo of it overtake her. “Dad, I think we’re within range of that telepathic block.”
“Yes, I’d noticed. This is your chance to think all those terrible thoughts you work so hard to hide when I’m around.”
She stared. “I don’t think horrible thoughts. Much.”
His smile was wry. He was close enough to reach out, brush her cheek. “You had some dust on you,” he said.
“Dad, are you scared?”
He thought a moment, looking up the endless turning of stairs to their unknown goal. “I’m cautious. The block shows how close we’re getting.” He must have seen some look of consternation on her face. “If I stopped to think of it, I would be scared, so we can’t stop. We must find your mother. We’ll be scared later, all right?”
The trek up the stairwell became a mountain climb, stepping carefully and hoping the soles of their shoes gripped, clinging to the railing and hauling themselves up, hand over hand. Anna’s father got in fron
t of her, sandwiching her between him and Paulson, as if that would keep her safer. She glanced up once and spotted Teddy in the lead, looking back to catch her gaze. He offered a grim smile before turning to run ahead and flashing to invisibility.
Paulson got rid of his suit jacket, and damp circles of sweat showed at his armpits. Arthur kept his trench coat on, like it was part of his uniform.
The worst trap came on the twenty-fifth floor, so close to their target Anna had already felt the first flash of elation at impending success. Almost there. They’d find Mom, catch the bad guys, and be home in time for dinner. Never mind that the details still hadn’t completely clarified.
This time, Sam stopped them, managing to look anxious even under his mask. The brash fighter had turned into a grim campaigner.
“Hissing again,” Sam said. “You guys hear it?”
“More gas?” Arthur said. “I’m starting to smell it, sulfury…”
“Oh, God,” Analise said, pure dread in her tone. “That’s propane. Something’s on fire.”
They looked up. A light was coming toward them, yellow flickering to orange, wavering with heat. The sound was like distant jet engines coming on, one by one. With each hiss and flare, a flame shot from a projection on the wall—not part of the girders and bolts in the building’s framework as they’d been disguised to appear, but nozzles and ignition systems, shooting out gas, lighting it, filling the stairwell with fireballs.
Waves of heat roiled toward them, and the paint and drywall were scorching, bubbling. The fire was scouring the stairwell.
“Move,” Paulson shouted. “Get to that door, get inside.”
Teia was already there, both hands around the doorknob, yanking on it, rattling it. “Locked!” she called back.
“Teddy!” Anna shouted. “Teddy, ghost through the door and unlock it!”
Lew shouted back, “He went scouting ahead, I don’t think he’s here!”
Anna cursed. Well, at least he’d be safe from this. Weirdly, she thought of prom. Wondered if he’d ask anyone else, after she was roasted. So simple a trap in the end. They’d be burned to cinders before even reaching the thirtieth floor. She was too stunned to even be afraid.