Dreams Of The Golden Age Part 26

"I'm fine. But the controls for the doors-I think they're on an upper floor, with the rest of the bad guys. I think the whole building might be set up with defenses."

Anna glanced at her father. "Did you get that?"

"I did. Captain Paulson, perhaps we can use helicopters to reach the upper stories?"

"My spotters say there's some kind of weaponry on the roof and patios. It'll take time to get past all that, and I don't want to spook these guys too bad."

Arthur said, "Oh, it's too late for that. What we have to do now is show them they can't beat us."

Nearby, Teia was cracking her fingers. "Blaster, you think we can take this?"

For the first time in months, Sam seemed uncertain, his lips pursed and his gaze darting across the dozens of square feet of steel they had to get through. "I don't know. Maybe if we focus everything on one spot. Can steel even freeze?"

"Anything can freeze if you get it cold enough."

Anna whispered into her microphone, "Ghost, I think we're going to try breaking in. You'd better get out of the way."

"Okay. I found some stairs, I'm going to scout ahead and let you know what I find."

Lady Snow and Blaster approached the blast doors.

Teia held her hands apart as if she were lifting a giant beach ball, gathering her power to her like it was something light and airy. Frost began to dust her sleeves, her mask, the tips of her escaping hair. Her breath fogged in a s.p.a.ce around her that had become a deep, cold winter. The air shimmered with ice crystals. Bringing her hands together, she crouched in front of the door and slammed her hands to the concrete.

A noise cracked across the street, the sound of falling icicles amplified. A reflective sheen spread out from her, covered the pavement, crawled up the blast door and surrounding wall. The sheet of ice hardened, frosted, and a wall of cold pressed out from the building as even the air froze. Teia seemed immune to the drop in temperature. Anna wondered how cold the doors actually were now; the frost formed streaks across the surface, looping patterns, feathered tendrils, beautiful crystalline shapes.

Teia backed out of the way, and Sam stepped forward. In the background, Paulson shouted at his people to back up and take cover.

"Anna, here," her father said, an anxious edge to his voice as he gestured her behind a nearby patrol car.

Sam brought both hands together in a joined fist and aimed. A doubled force of energy, bronzed rays of light, blasted away from him and hit the doors, which shattered. Shards of frozen steel radiated out in a cloud of water vapor, leaving behind a jagged s.p.a.ce where the doors used to be. The guards on the inside probably got the worst of it. Peeled, warped edges of steel folded inward, pointing toward a path of ripped floor and steaming debris.

Arthur strode toward the mess.

"Dad!" Anna waited for the gunfire that would mow him down when the guards stormed through the breach in the wall.

His hand was on his head, and he was glaring. This wasn't Anna's father anymore-this was the Dr. Mentis she'd read about in books. Paulson shouted again at his people to stand back.

A silent minute ticked over. And another. Dr. Mentis turned around. "Captain, I believe the ground floor is clear."

The police captain rolled his eyes before waving a SWAT unit forward. The black-garbed and helmeted group of officers held their guns ready as they streamed forward in a military formation, past a nonchalant Dr. Mentis. They peered carefully through the hole before trickling into the building, leading with their guns.

"What did you do?" Anna asked him.

"I cleared the ground floor," he said simply.

The radio in Paulson's hand crackled on. "Sir," a voice scratched, "we've got something like thirty bodies here. Mercenary unit, I'm guessing. Lots of body armor, automatic weapons."

"Bodies," Paulson said, glaring at Mentis. "Are they dead?"

A brief pause, then, "No ... it looks like they're asleep."

"The usual trick," Arthur said, putting his hands in the pockets of his trench coat, shrugging.

Anna pressed the headset to her face. "Teddy? Ghost? Can you hear me?" No answer. "Teddy, where are you?"

"I can't really make exceptions when I'm trying to drop a whole room like that," he said, not sounding the least bit apologetic.

"We have to find him," Anna said.

Ms. Baker stepped forward, staring thoughtfully at the hole her daughter had helped make. A mist hung in the air, vaporized particles still settling out. "d.a.m.n," she murmured.

Teia flexed her hands nervously, looking like she wanted to say something. Yearning for approval. Her mother just smiled.

Arthur said, "a.n.a.lise, if I could suggest that you wait someplace safe-"

"I'm keeping an eye on my kids. I'm not even a telepath and I know what you're thinking-my powers are gone, I'm all washed up. Well, if they're blocking your powers, we're in the same boat, right? Handicapped and useless? I'm staying."

Teia, Lew, and Sam-the Trinity-were already running through the breached blast doors, ignoring Paulson's orders for them to stand down. Arthur followed at a more leisurely place, with a.n.a.lise not far behind, a resigned set to her shoulders and crossed arms.

Anna hesitated a moment, overwhelmed. The hole in the blast door suddenly gaped like a mouth, and the darkness inside loomed. Lights glowed within, but they seemed ominous. She felt small next to the towering skysc.r.a.per and the ignorance of what lay within. The old stories of her grandparents and Commerce City's other heroes had seemed so ... epic. This-believing her mother was inside but not knowing for sure, hoping she was still alive and unhurt-it didn't feel epic, it felt desperate. Necessary. Like getting a cavity filled. You hunkered down and did it because you had to, and no one could do it for you.

She reminded herself: She wasn't alone in this-in fact, the whole city seemed to be here to help, because anyone who could hurt Celia could hurt everybody. They had to win. Anna repeated to herself: "I am superhuman. I am a West and a Mentis, and this is what I was always meant to do."

She ran to catch up to the others.

TWENTY-ONE.

THEIR plan to s.n.a.t.c.h the girls had obviously gone horribly, spectacularly-and, Celia hoped, hilariously-wrong. She wished she could have seen it, especially if it involved Sam Stowe's laser blasts. Or maybe an invisible Teddy Donaldson pantsing them both. The possibilities were endless and gorgeous. At any rate, the two hench-fiends had been thwarted and were returning home. The girls were safe.

"How can they be on to us already?" said the mentalist in response to Majors's bad news. "There's no way she could have warned the telepath-we were supposed to have hours of lead time before anyone found out."

"The telepath must be stronger than we thought," Majors said thoughtfully. "Even with you blocking, he must have known as soon as we took her." The man looked sidelong at her, rea.s.sessing.

No, Celia thought. Anna was the one who realized what had happened immediately. The mental block must have erased Celia from her daughter's awareness, and she raised the alarm. Which meant things around here were going to get noisy in short order. She directed a placid smile at Majors.

"Don't think this means you'll be rescued anytime soon," he shot back at her.

"You believe I'm this powerful archvillain-don't you think I had a plan in place for just this event? My people are coming, Majors."

"Your people are deluded."

She turned to Mindwall, who kept throwing worried glances toward the windows. "And what are yours?" she said.

"This building is a fortress. Unless they can fly-and I know they can't-they'll never get here. I hope you enjoy your stay at Elroy Asylum."

"Hmm, I've been wanting to take a vacation. But I was hoping for a beach."

He was just like every other two-bit hack who'd ever kidnapped her in the old days. Expecting her to be fearful and cowering in the presence of his awesome might, he was instead discomfited by her amus.e.m.e.nt, by her lack of concern. Instead of ignoring her as he should, he struggled to impress her with his strength. The more he struggled, the more foolish he appeared. They never pinged to this.

His expression turned cruel. "Every elevator shaft is trapped. All the staircases have countermeasures. The exterior of the building has antiaircraft weapons that will target anything larger than a human body. No one reaches this s.p.a.ce without my permission. But if you give up now, if you agree to sign over West Corp, I can end it all. This doesn't have to be a battle."

-Arthur, I wish you could hear me, so I could warn you.- "You don't know a d.a.m.n thing about Commerce City, do you?"

An explosion sounded, a rumble from street level resembling the force of heavy-duty construction. Majors stalked to the window and looked down. The mentalist fidgeted, acting like he wanted to flee. Celia imagined saying "boo" might set him off.

"Should I go check it out?" said the thug, Majors's remaining guard.

"No," Majors commanded, returning from the window. "Sonic and Shark should be back any second. They can scout it out. Steel, you watch her." The thug leered at her.

"Steel? Is that supposed to be the noun or the verb?"

His smile vanished.

"Ignore her," Majors commanded. "She's baiting you."

A flash of motion to Celia's left caught her attention. She resisted focusing on that s.p.a.ce to avoid drawing Majors's interest. Letting her vision go soft, she kept her head still while looking out the corner of her eye.

A figure crouched at the edge of the wall, lurking just at the doorway. Obvious, not real good at staying out of sight. But the others were too preoccupied to notice, and the mentalist's powers obviously had no active component-he didn't have a clue that the room held an extra person. The newcomer had a mask and a dark green skin suit-the strange super, the one she couldn't ID. Just like the rest of them. She should have known he'd turn up here. At least he wasn't working for Majors.

This rescue was going to get very complicated.

She decided to help Majors stay distracted. Plus, she wanted to see how far she could push him before he really got p.i.s.sed off. Arthur would say that was her old self-destructive inner teenager talking. Some habits died hard, didn't they?

"What is this really about?" Celia demanded. "Are you p.i.s.sed 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 a.s.sured 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. a.s.suming 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. n.o.body 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 fl.u.s.tered 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 doc.u.ments 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 f.u.c.king 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.