***
Sasha woke up with a throbbing headache. Her body was cold and still felt rigid. At first she attributed it to the stun weapon’s effects. Then she realized that the chillness came from the cold metal floor she was lying on. She tried to push herself up. But she couldn’t. Her hands were firmly locked behind her back with heavy iron shackles. An attempt to move her legs told her that her ankles were shackled as well. She forced her eyes open. Her sight was still blurry, but she figured that she was in a metal cage, barely wide enough for her to fit in. The metal bars were at least an inch thick.
“Ah, my sleeping beauty is waking up,” a voice said over an intercom. Sasha recognized both the line and the voice all too well. Roger had said it to her in the mornings often enough.
“You’re so afraid of a bound woman that you can’t even show your face, Roger?” Sasha said.
“I have no intention of letting you play any tricks on me, Sasha,” Roger said. “You know what’s funny? You were so furious about me not telling you about my...business. At the same time you have been just as dishonest with me, neglecting to mention those metahuman powers you have. Playing the cute, innocent waitress instead. That’s priceless, really.”
“I was never dishonest with you, Roger. I didn’t want to be anything else than a waitress. That’s why I never told you about my powers - because I didn’t want to have anything to do with them anymore and just be myself, that’s all.”
“You do-gooder types are bending truth as you please, just to get the moral high ground and paint the world in that simplicistic black and white view of yours. Fact is that we both kept a few things secret from the other. We’re not that much different.”
“You’re wrong. There is a difference between you and me, Roger.”
“And that would be?”
“I am not a murderer.”
Roger sighed. “I am tired of this debate. I hope you like your accommodation. It’s specifically constructed for keeping super-types in. Well, most of them anyway. At least I am fairly that certain you don’t have anything at your disposal to break out from there. Not that you can use your magic while being tied up anyway, but even if you could, neither lightning nor kinetic blasts can do much to a cage.”
“I am curious. Why didn’t you just kill me, Roger? Isn’t that what you wanted to do all along?”
“Who says that I won’t do just that in the end? You, my dear, have caused me so much trouble that I can’t just put a bullet through your head and be done with it. That would be too easy for you. I really miss the civilian life I have lost because of you. It was great being able to just go to the mall, or a restaurant, or see a game of ball. Thanks to you I have to keep in hiding all the time now, since the better part of all Vancouver cops is looking for me. And this little...vendetta you have started against me and my organization. Do you have any idea how much this has cost me so far?”
“Whatever it was, it wasn’t enough.”
The answer came in a different way than Sasha expected. An electric jolt shot through her body, originating from the cage’s metal floor. She shrieked out loud in pain and surprise.
“This was the lowest setting, Sasha,” Roger’s voice said. “It has nine higher ones. I plan to test them all on you. I am sure you will love it. And I hope you won’t die on me before we reach the last one. But I guess that’s the good thing about your regenerative body. I can harm it as much as I want to – unless I outright kill you, I can just wait for you to regenerate and then hurt you some more.”
“How very charming. You are a true gentleman, Roger,” Sasha said and paused shortly. “I don’t know how I could have fallen in love with someone like you.”
“As you know I can’t say that I made the same mistake. Although I have to admit I was fairly content with our arrangement while it lasted. And the benefits weren’t so bad either. The whores I now have to pay for are a lot more expensive than you ever were.”
“I hate you, Roger,” Sasha whispered.
“When I am done with you, I would be really disappointed if you wouldn’t hate me. Oh, and before I forget: Feel free to scream your lungs out, Sasha. Nobody will be able to hear you down here.”
The next thing Sasha knew was her body convulsing in agony, as the electric current came on again, but much stronger than before. The pain was nothing like anything she had experienced before. Her entire body felt as if it was burning from the inside out. The powerful electric jolts made her thrashing against her restraints, ripping open the skin on her wrists and ankles.
Sasha didn’t want to give Roger the satisfaction of hearing her scream, but she couldn’t prevent it. She screamed. And then she screamed louder when Roger increased the setting on his torture machine another notch. And another.
***
Tom Clarkson was a tough and seasoned cop who didn’t feel desperation easily. But it was the second week his daughter was missing. And from his experience he knew that most missing people are either found by this time, or they never are. He knew that Sasha went after her ex-husband’s gang. And that she did so alone, despite his urging her not to and to work with his team instead. Or at least ask some other superheroes to back her up. But Sasha’s stubbornness in that regard could almost be counted as a superpower itself.
Tom sat down at his desk, sighing deeply and taking a sip from his oversized coffee mug, when his office door flew open and Inspector Brewster stormed in.
“Tom, I think we’ve got something.”
The older cop raised an eyebrow. “What is it, Dave?”
“We snatched a crook from the streets this morning while he was trying to break into a few cars. He was high on all sorts of stuff. He just told us his entire life story. It seems Black Vortex paid him to help him lure a metahuman woman into a trap two weeks ago. The description of the girl he had set up perfectly matches your daughter. And we know where he sent her to.”
Tom sprang up from his desk, spilling his coffee in the process. “Get all the superheroes you can possibly get a hold on and meet me in the garage. Now!”
***
Five minutes later, Tom stood in front of an impressive force. Dave had assembled sixty policemen in heavy combat gear, twenty armoured patrol cars and two helicopters. Tom smiled. If a fellow cop’s loved ones were in danger, there was nothing that could stop his or her comrades from doing everything they could to help out.
His gaze fell on a pair of costumed metahumans standing next to the policemen.
“Dave...I thought I’d know all local heroes, but those guys I have never seen before. Who are they?”
“You mean the two to the right? They happened to be in the area when we sent the general call for assistance and volunteered to help out.”
Tom walked up to the pair, nodding appreciatively at them.
The deep blue skin colour of the young man clearly gave him away as a metahuman of sorts, although the rest of his appearance could as well have jumped straight out of a seventies Western movie. The man shaped his lips into a bright smile and tipped against the rim of his black western hat with his right index finger. Then he removed his dark, rimless sunglasses, revealing a pair of dazzling blue eyes.
“Howdy,” the man said, and only now Tom realized that even his hair had a distinct blue colour.
To his right a tall blonde woman stood with one hand resting on her hip, her bangs flowing loosely around her head and face, the golden strands ending between her shoulder-blades. The girl appeared to be in her late twenties and was dressed in plate-reinforced red tights and thigh-high white boots – but Tom thought her most striking feature were her gleaming golden eyes.
“Glad to have you guys aboard,” Tom said.
“No problem. And don’t worry, we will get your girl out in one piece,” the blue skinned hero said while shaking Tom’s hand.
“If I may ask, what’s your name?”
“They call me Code Blue,” the hero said, and motioned to the woman next to him. “My companion here is Firebird?
??
“Nice to meet both of you,” Tom said.
“We’re ready whenever you are, Superintendent,” Inspector Brewster called from behind.
“Let’s move, then!” Tom said, nodding to the heroes once more before he rushed off to a waiting patrol car.
He just hoped they wouldn’t be too late to save Sasha.
***
It was late afternoon when they arrived at the cannery. Most of the workers had already gone home. Tom didn’t mind. It would make their job a lot easier, not having too many innocents around in what was probably going to end up in a major mess. He put down his binoculars and gave the signal.
A second later, hell broke loose over the cannery. The patrol cars came down on the factory from all sides at once like a swarm of birds of prey, closing off every possible escape route within a few seconds. Policemen jumped out of the cars, quickly overwhelming the surprised workers and dragging them out of harm’s way. At the same time, the two helicopters fired several rounds of tear gas and stun grenades into the building. After the ammunition had gone off inside the warehouse, Tom’s people stormed the building. Orders to stand down were yelled by the policemen, but the law-enforcement officers were instead greeted by several shotgun rounds, fired by a few gangsters hiding behind a stack of boxes. The cops answered the challenge by launching a hailstorm of bullets in the gangsters’ direction, their assault rifles set on full automatic mode. A few agonized yells told Tom that their rounds had found their targets. One wounded gangster fell from behind the boxes, holding his thigh, and wildly waved his hand in surrender. The others lay still on the concrete floor in quickly expanding puddles of their own blood.
It took all but half a minute until the factory level was declared secured. More workers and a few other men - obviously gang members – were hauled out of the building. Tom walked over to a handcuffed man lying face-down on the floor and snagged a key chain holding his security card from his belt. He turned around to where the superhero group was waiting for the cops to clear them for the next part.
“Here, you’re going to need this!” Tom said and tossed the key card to Code Blue.
The superhero effortlessly caught it with one hand and nodded. Followed by Firebird, he stormed off to the elevator.
***
When the elevator door opened, the two heroes were immediately greeted by a threesome of gangsters standing in the corridor, pointing handguns at them.
Code Blue laughed and shook his head. “Is that all you have to offer in terms of firepower?” he teased the mobsters. With a snap of his hand and a command of his mind, he tore the firearms from their owners’ hands as if an invisible rope had pulled them off. The weapons dropped to the metal ground behind Code Blue with cling and slid out of harm’s way.
Firebird pointed her hands in the mobsters’ direction and released a massive wall of fire that engulfed the entire corridor, searing into the gangsters and stinging their exposed skin. With a focused concentration, she heard three distinct bumps, indicating that the three goons had dropped to the floor in surprise and pain and would no longer be able to offer any resistance.
Needing no communication to coordinate their moves, the pair of heroes swept into the corridor, wordlessly splitting up, each charging into a different room. They knew they had to work quickly.
***
Black Vortex cursed when he heard the noise of battle coming from the corridor outsides. He had no idea how the cops could have found him here. He had used this facility as headquarters for a long time before moving Stinger’s base of operations to another place, and not once in all that time the cops had shown up here.
Not that it mattered. He didn’t need this compound anymore, which is why he had used it to set up Sasha in the first place The cops would not arrest him today, either. This facility came fully equipped and included an escape tunnel for an occasion just like this.
But there was something Roger would still have to finish before he left.
He half opened, half kicked the door to the room where his ex-wife was held. He briefly looked through the one-way mirror separating the room in two halves. Sasha was lying motionless on the floor inside the cage, her flickering eyes half opened in semi-consciousness. Roger knew she was more dead than alive, after he had tormented her with electric shocks for almost two weeks. Her regenerative powers couldn’t keep up with the pace he had kept on destroying her body with. And he would finish the job now, before the cops had a chance to free her.
He rushed to the control console, setting the power level on the torture machine to maximum. Then he pressed the button. He was instantly gratified with Sasha’s terrible screams, as the strong electric jolts lifted her body from the ground, throwing her around in agony.
He smiled wickedly, revelling in the thought that Sasha would not survive this treatment for more than a minute or two. The cops would find only her dead body. He gave his suffering ex-wife a final mock salute, then turned around and headed to his escape tunnel.
***
Firebird stood in the changing room, looking down at the body of an unconscious gangster who just had tried to sneak up on her - and paid for the attempt by having to stand in the middle of a concussive blast of flames. A noise coming from the far side of the level made her halt and listen. It was something she hadn’t heard in the facility until now. A woman’s screams.
Tom’s daughter, Firebird realized, and launched herself into air. Like a red bullet she soared through the corridor towards where she could hear the screams coming from.
Rather than pausing to open it, Firebird simply tucked her head and levelled the door at the hall's end by flying directly into it. As it snapped and swung open, the heroine likewise swung upright to spy the source of the cries - and a fist clenching around her stomach halted her. Firebird couldn’t believe what she was seeing. That any human, even a gangster, could be so thoroughly and completely evil to be able to treat other human beings like this - being enemies or not - was beyond her. The bound and caged woman inside was still convulsing in pain, but her screams had reduced to a mere whimpering now. She was just moments away from dying.
Firebird examined the cage, but she couldn’t even see where the lock was, much less had any idea how to open it. Her gaze fell upon the control console at the far side of the room, but there was no time for figuring out how it worked. Drawing on her powers, she conjured up a massive ball of fire and launched it at the console, where it exploded in a tremendous blast that sent bits of metal clattering to the room's four corners.
When the concussive blast had subsided, Firebird looked at the result, and for the first time since the operation started, smiled. She had completely fried the console, destroying the wiring inside and shutting off the power. The smile was short-lived, and vanished when she looked at the woman inside the cage.
The Superintendent’s daughter was no longer moving.
***
Firebird’s head whirled around when Code Blue rushed into the room. The blonde heroine was bent over the unmoving figure on the floor. She had managed to pull Sasha out of the cage after the loss of power had automatically unlocked it.
Without turning to her arrived companions, Firebird spoke, golden eyes wet with sorrow, “There's no pulse.”
Code Blue gazed at the white-haired girl who stared at them from lifeless eyes, and clenched his fists. “I think we need to tell the Superintendent,” the blue skinned hero quietly said.
Slowly, Firebird pushed herself upright. She lingered there a few moments, and just as she thought to join her companion and leave the room, she looked down at the girl at her feet once more.
And she froze when she saw that Sasha’s eyes were blinking.
Code Blue's head turned at the sudden exclamation from their compatriot, focusing the white haired woman. The message they’d take to her father would be a happy one after all. Sasha’s regenerative body had managed to pull her back literally moments before she would have crossed the point of no return t
o life.
***
Sasha sat on a recliner in her parents’ lawn, enjoying the day’s last rays of the sun shining down on her. She turned when her father approached, handing her a drink. He was still dressed in his uniform and looked concerned, as he had done all day long.
“Thanks, dad,” she said absently.
She took a sip, and looked into her dad’s eyes. He wasn’t saying anything, but he didn’t have to. Sasha understood very well what his gaze was telling her.
“I know, dad,” she said, looking towards the ground. “It was a very stupid thing to do.”
Tom nodded. “Yes, it was. But what counts is that you’re alive.”
“I had to do it, dad. And you know why.”
“Yes, I do. I am very well aware of what Roger did to both you and Jennifer. And that you want to bring him to justice. That’s not the problem at all. Hunting criminals is what we all do, Sasha. But I am doing in a team, where we can watch each other’s back. Your magic makes you strong. It doesn’t make you immortal.”
Sasha averted her head. Having almost died today, she could hardly argue this point with her dad. Her regenerative body could not heal her if she was dead.
“They still hurt much?” Tom asked, pointing at Sasha’s bandaged wrists that her involuntary thrashing against her restraints had ripped wide open.
“A little. But it will pass. A few more hours I guess.”
Tom looked over his shoulder as he heard steps approaching.
“I guess there is someone you might want to talk to, Sasha,” he said, giving his daughter a wink.
“Hi Sasha,” a smiling Firebird said. “Good to see you so well already.”
“I guess I have to thank you for saving my life,” Sasha said.
“Ah, no worries. Happy to,” the woman said cheerfully.
“Dad’s telling me you are a metahuman, too?”
The woman tilted her head to one side, as if in momentary thought. “I...guess that's as good a description as any.”
“You’re pretty much the first one I have ever talked to who’s not a mage. The only other one I ever met wanted to kill me.”
Firebird folded her arms, and shivered slightly. “I overheard a bit of your discussion with your dad,” the red and white clad heroine said, changing the topic.