The Prospects (Book 2): Nothing Poorer Than Gods (12 page)

Knockout Rose walked gracefully enough to balance a book on her head so she wouldn’t show how scared she was. Pinwheel’s legs trembled. Arbalest showed no fear but even the segmented plates in his armor seemed tense.

Arbalest pressed his ear. “Stormhead says some crooks slipped through a hole in the wall. About a dozen are headed our way.” He slapped his crossbow’s magazine. “I’ve got two dozen rounds, so you rookies can sit back.”

The last thing Knockout Rose wanted was time to think, but that’s all she had. She thought about her creed of using what she had to make it as a superhero and how Agent O’Farrell liked her bravery and determination, but to be a real superhero she’d have to prostitute herself. Despite the other compromises she made during her modeling career, including wearing only paint and a thong in public as a Young Sentinel, this felt degrading.

Wait. She was barely awake when she made that deal. She didn’t know what was happening. After this battle, she’d return the armor and never talk to that crazy doctor again. Maybe she wouldn’t even give it back to him. What was he going to do, complain after he forced her into a bad deal?

Arbalest looked through his crossbow’s scope. He moved the crossbow in a slow arc as he fired several bolts. Each hit their targets and exploded into a cloud of white gas that made them double-over and cough furiously.

“Funny thing about villains,” said Arbalest. “For all the work they put into looking so unique, they always end up in identical orange jumpsuits. They’re not getting any closer, so you two are as useless as tits on a …”

Magna flew over the bridge and spoke in a sub-sonic tone that carried despite the wind and her velocity: “Under the bridge!”

Knockout Rose looked over the bridge’s side. Several black humanoid shapes in orange jumpsuits clung and slid along the cracked concrete supports.

A chimpanzee-like face framed by black hair and large yellow teeth climbed straight towards her.

She fired her bracer over the edge. Some of it splashed off her glove’s knuckle before she remembered to lower her hand. The chimpanzee-man shrieked and fell into the East River.

Several other ape-men climbed over both sides of the bridge.

“It’s the Simian Squad,” said Arbalest. “Those damn dirty apes snuck up on us.”

Knockout Rose recognized the gang of human-ape hybrids from news stories. They were much uglier up close. She slapped her wrists together and charged at a black-furred ape-man.

Knockout Rose raised her hands and blocked his wild swing. The charge from the gloves made him fall.

Pinwheel sent a flash of light along his side of the bridge. One of the ape-men lost his grip and fell. Another swung upwards and landed right in front of him.

“Duck!” shouted Arbalest.

Pinwheel dropped. Arbalest’s tear-gas bolt hit the ape-man in the face. The blunt impact alone knocked it out.

Another ape-man would have hit Arbalest from behind if Knockout Rose didn’t sink a solid punch into his hairy stomach. Instead of taking down the best crossbowman in the world, he went down.

More inmates than Knockout Rose could count ran to the bridge. She fired every capsule in her bracers to create a thick cloud of capsaicin. Any able to carry on were taken down with electrified jabs. The ones who ran to her right were stopped by Pinwheel’s blinding flashes. The ones on the left fell to Arbalest’s bolts.

A huge gorilla-man ran through the cloud of capsaicin. His open hand smacked Knockout Rose squarely on the back, sending her to the ground with the sound of crunching metal. Her smartfabric bodysuit tightened to keep the shock from breaking her spine.

Knockout Rose shook her head. Through the stars in her eyes she saw the gorilla-man. He bellowed loud enough to drown out the escape alarms and pounced on Arbalest.

Knockout Rose ran as straight as she could, which meant it wasn’t the straightest path, but it got her close enough land an overhand punch in gorilla-man’s kidneys. He spun and faced her.

A loud crack echoed. Against the afternoon sun Knockout Rose barely saw the beam of light cut the gorilla-man’s arm off at the elbow.

The gorilla-man waved what was left of his limb at Knockout Rose. She launched a flurry of punches into his face and kept hitting until the gloves had no electricity left.

The gorilla-man collapsed.  Then came the wall of light.

Knockout Rose would’ve been blinded if not for her mask’s tinted lenses. She thought the flashes were from Pinwheel before she saw the mob of news photographers behind the line of Riker’s Island correctional officers.

Falling back on her modeling skills, she struck poses for the camera over the gorilla-man’s unconscious body.

Pinwheel helped Arbalest to his feet. He raised his unloaded crossbow and looked towards North Brother Island. “They’re falling back.” He pushed his ear. “Stormhead says it’s over. A small boat got away while he and Magna were picking escapees out of the river, but no one got past on our side.”

Knockout Rose didn’t hear a word after “over.” She flipped her hair back and tilted her better side to the cameras.

Arbalest patted her shoulder. “Not bad for a redheaded greenhorn.”

Knockout Rose kept posing. The photographers snapped pictures and the guards cheered as she raised her fists to the sky.

This was her finest moment. It ended when Arbalest whispered, “Ask Doctor Von Dyme to fix your harness. No one can repair his stuff but him.”

That made her remember the price she had to pay for the respect of others was her self-respect.

It almost seemed worth it.

Portia pointed to the purple flowers on her bottle of Fiji Water. “If we pull this off, we’ll be here within two days.”

“Wow,” said Candilyn, who wore a new green-and-black hoodie and black jeans. “Japan is pretty.”

“It’s not Japan.”

“Uh-uh. Fiji is a big mountain in Japan. That’s one of the few things I learned in school.”

Portia studied Candilyn’s pupil dilation and the way her cheek muscles arched. There was no physiological indication of guile. Candilyn truly believed what she said. “You have much to learn.”

“When are the other people you called getting here?”

Portia pulled out and opened the browser to reveal a news website with the headline: “BREAKING NEWS: Prison Break Underway at North Brother Island.”

A police car drove past. Arbalest was easy to spot in the passenger seat thanks to his violet-and-black costume. Magna flew out from the roof of Griffin Tower and rose above the skyscrapers.

“Our associates are in position,” said Portia. “How well do you know Griffin Tower?”

“Pretty good. There's a lot I didn't see.”

“Where would they keep someone like your hacker friend?”

“First, he’s not my friend, he’s a douche-nerd-scumbag. Second, are you sure he’s not in prison?”

“One hundred percent. You heard me make the calls this morning.”

“That was really cool. You spoke with a new voice each time.”

“The important thing is they thought I was with the MAB. That’s the only reason they told me one Vijay Gupta, codename Asura, was transferred to Griffin Tower.”

“So who’s attacking the prison?”

“My competitors. I sold Vijay’s old information to some snitches and fixers. Since genius-level hackers are rare, and the Handler is paying so much for them right now, any assassin worth a damn is ready to take the chance.”

“You screwed over your competition and made money doing it?” Candilyn stroked her hand. “You’re amazing.”

Candilyn’s fingers entwined with Portia’s when a skinny Japanese man walked past them.

Portia said, “
Konichiwa
, Ujimushi.”

Ujimushi bowed slightly.

He followed her to a bench where a stocky Hispanic man with strange bulges in his vest read the Village Voice.

He lowered his sunglasses with a robotic hand when Portia approached. Instead of a left eye, he had a black glass lens with an LED buried in the center. Through his open vest Candilyn saw the skull and crossed wrenches symbol of the Iron Pirates.

“Introductions are in order,” said Portia. “Bosillos, this is Ujimushi. You two infiltrated Griffin Tower a month ago. How?”

Bosillos shrugged. “I didn’t go in, I watched the getaway truck. Captain Rust and the crew followed the Skreaks through the front doors.”

Ujimushi said, “We used a tunnel under a subway platform.”

Candilyn tensed. Ujumushi was a Shade Blade. That gave her a flashback of being shot the night they attacked.

Portia asked, “Can we reopen the tunnel?”

“It is filled with stone and sand. Digging a new one would be easier.”

“I can get us in,” said Candilyn.

Portia turned to Bosillos. “Can we force our way through the front door?”

“There’s two armed guards at the front desk,” said Bosillos. “Bet they’ve got a button there.”

“There’s a way around him,” said Candilyn.

Portia ignored her. “What about the windows? Ujimushi, could you scale the wall?”

“We considered that when planning our infiltration,” said Ujimushi. “The building has an alarm system. We’d risk setting it off.”

“I see, what about …”

Bosillos said, “Forget getting in, how do we get out?”

“There’s a taxi with the number One-A-Two-Two circling the block. It’s being driven by one of Le Parrain’s former chauffeurs.”

“We’re escaping by taxi?” said Ujimushi.

“Can you think of anything less conspicuous in New York?”

Bosillos asked, “Where’s the
chava
going?” after Candilyn crossed the street.

Portia dodged cars to catch up. “Where the hell are you going?”

“I told you, I can get us in.”

“I don’t think you’re smarter than an engineer and a ninja.”

“Why are we working with a Shade Blade? Those assholes nearly killed me.”

“It’s one job. I guarantee he won’t leave the building.”

“And an Iron Pirate? They rape.”

“He won’t lay a finger on us. He wants to rescue his friend from vivisection in the research lab.”

“Vivi-what?”

“Cutting him apart while he’s still alive.”

“Really? Doctor Von Dyme is doing that?

“Of course not. I lied. He will go straight to the lab while Ujimushi will guard the elevator and stairway. Both of them think we’ll protect the escape route, but we’ll be the only ones to get out.”

“So we’re using these guys to break into Griffin Tower while we get Asura, but they’re not going after him? What are they? Decoys?”

“Exactly. You may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, darling, but you’re not the dullest.”

Candilyn grinned. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

Bosillos and Ujimushi crossed the street.

Portia drew Candilyn’s face close to hers. “Tonight, we’ll be on the airplane to paradise. Do you want that?”

Candilyn nodded.

“Good,” said Portia. “Get us in.”

Candilyn led them to an emergency exit near the closed loading docks.

“You know those are exit-only, right?” said Bosillos.

Candilyn slid a false brick aside to show a keypad. “When I lived here, I could come and go as long as I told the trainer where I went. I used this door after the front desk closed.”

She typed in some numbers and pushed the pound key. The door popped open.

“We’re lucky they didn’t take you out of the system yet,” said Bosillos.

“The Handler is keeping the New York Guardians too busy to worry about trivial matters,” said Portia.

Ujimushi stripped his street clothes off and pressed a button on his belt. His camouflaging bodysuit turned the same shade of white as the walls.

Bosillos took a roll of duct tape from one of his many pockets and put a strip over the latch. “This won’t lock again.”

In Griffin Tower’s interrogation room, Gale Force said, “So, you and Alex came back by private plane?”

Trista was glad to talk about anything. It gave her an excuse not to remember what happened when Sergeant Hammer brought her into this room after she tried to escape last month. “Yeah, Penobscot Enterprises’s corporate jet. They provided bodyguards too.”

“I’m jealous. It must have been luxurious.”

“It was nice.”

“Just nice?”

Trista didn’t want to tell Gale Force how Trista took no time to enjoy the plush leather seats or complementary soft drinks. All she did was wait for Alex, who was still groggy from the drugs, to pass out. When he did, she stole his smartphone, unlocked it, looked up a Planned Parenthood clinic near Griffin Tower, and whispered while she made an appointment. She got the phone back in Alex’s pocket with no trouble. As long as he didn’t check the call log or search history, he’d never know.

Trista considered abortion murder thanks to that message being reinforced for years at Catholic school. But murder no longer seemed like a mortal sin. She felt no guilt for making Malone shoot Slick Shadow. One simple action saved her and Alex. And last month she burned an Iron Pirate to death with Sunburn’s helio-cannon without a second thought.

Was it really murder if she killed a monster? And how could the parasite inside her be anything but a monster? It was made from a villainess and someone pretending to be a hero. No good could come of it. Even if she went to hell, she’d spare lots of others from the suffering that thing would inflict on the world.

Trista tried to believe that. All she had to do was keep the appointment in two days. It’d all be over then. She’d tell Alex. He’d be there for her. He wouldn’t tell her she was going to hell. At least she hoped he wouldn’t. That’s what she told herself over and over again.

She forced all of that from her mind. She had to focus on Vijay. She couldn’t make sense of all the flashing computer screens that came from Vijay’s hacking. She focused on his underlying intentions and subconscious thoughts. Those were strictly focused on a task. Nothing implied the hot thoughts of betrayal or sharp stabbing ideas of treachery.

After an awkward silence Gale Force said, “I thought you hated that blue sweatshirt.”

Trista tugged its sleeve. “I left it here when we moved out. This and my old costume are my only clean clothes.”

Vijay said, “And, of course, you chose frumpy over slutty.”

Trista sent the words
Get back to work
into his head.

Vijay stopped typing, “Please, don't do that.”

You wanted to take control of me last
month
.
Now I’m in control of you.

“I’m lucky I had two spare costumes here,” said Gale Force. “Dressing the part makes me feel less like a girl from New Jersey. It’s too bad Pinwheel and Knockout Rose have nothing but the suits they wore off the island. I wouldn’t want to walk around in a tight suit like Kayleigh does.”

Vijay muttered, “I wouldn’t want you to either, chubby.”

“If you can tell me without letting Vijay hear,” said Gale Force, “what did you learn in Boston?”

Trista shut down Vijay’s auditory processing to render him temporarily deaf. “The main thing is that we were on the right track. Wyckedblade had his mind put into a new body at some point. Whoever is behind the genetic experiments and the attack on Griffin Island not only has a cloning machine, but an Ultra-Genius I used to know to put old minds in new bodies.”

“What happened to Wyckedblade's old body?”

“This is where it gets sick. Not long before his physical death, Wyckedblade filed a sexual assault complaint against Sergeant Hammer.”

“He didn’t …” Gale Force’s face scrunched in disgust, “did he?”

“Alex never got a copy of the complaint, which he should have after it was sent to the MAB’s central office. According to Agent Breugnon, Sergeant Hammer shoved Wyckedblade’s knives up his … yeah, you guessed where. He needed some embarrassing surgery. His dead body was found a week after he was released from the hospital. When we visited the site, I didn’t get any flashes of traumatic memories. His mind was removed before then.”

“So someone recruited his mind?”

“And then let Sergeant Hammer destroy the original body.”

“I hope Sarge isn’t involved in this body-swapping mess. I never want to see him again.”

“Neither do I.”

“What was Agent Breugnon like?”

“Nothing like Alex. He’s an old man who spends most of his time in an office. Midnight Rider and his many sidekicks, like Liberty Boy and Minute-Girl, are the closest thing Boston has to a team. Agent Breugnon lets them do whatever they want until there’s a pile of complaints, and then he takes the heroes’ side all the way. That explains why he didn’t press the investigation against Sergeant Hammer.”

“Alex may have to fight to keep the New York Guardians in line, but at least he tries.” Gale Force stood on her crutches. “I need a bathroom break.”

Upstairs, Alex said, “And this is our medical ward.”

Emily and Calvin followed him. “It looks new.” Emily couldn’t help staring at Gary and Ruby.

Gary waved. Ruby stared right back.

“Keep an eye on Calvin,” said Alex. “Harry, surprised to see you out of your lab.”

“It’s Professor Photon while I’m in costume.” He gestured to Noah and the other survivors. “Someone has to watch our guests.”

Deon ran to Alex so quickly it made a breeze. “Hey, sharp suit. Did the MAB finally start paying you?”

Alex straightened his pinstriped jacket’s narrow lapels. “Trista saved me, but not my clothes. Luckily I’m about the same size as Midnight Rider, and he had a closet full of these tailored duds. How are the patients?”

“Gary’s wound is scabbed over, Joey is healing real fast, and Ruby and Noah are here because they won’t leave their friends.”

Noah shook his shackles. “Agent, did you have to bring a gun?”

Alex patted the service pistol holstered on his belt. “MAB requirement. If I’m on duty, I’m armed. Professor Photon, any word from our teammates who went to the prison break?”

“No, nothing.”

“Not even from Magna? You and Mindy stayed in constant contact when you had separate assignments.”

“Magna isn’t Mindy. She’s …” Professor Photon pressed his helmet's earpiece. “The alarm went off in the research lab. There shouldn’t be anyone up there.”