Corpies (Super Powereds Spinoff Book 1) (7 page)

“I am right,” Owen stepped forward, his large body’s movement finally seeming to snap the people in the apartment to awareness of the costumed men’s presence. One of the older men lowered his bucket and raced over to Owen.

“No. . . go. . . Go away!” His voice was heavy with a Hispanic accent, and his stilted way of speaking made it clear he was still learning English. Once upon a time Owen could have faked his way through some basic phrases, but Spanish was a skill he’d long ago let rust to oblivion on his mental shelf.

Galvanize, thankfully, had not been so lax in his language exercises. He hurried over immediately, snapping into a quick, fluent conversation with the older man. Owen was impressed; the kid even rolled his
r’s
, a trick Owen had never managed to get down.

“I’m hitting a wall,” Galvanize told him after a few moments of conversation. “They understand that the building is on fire, but they’re refusing to leave. They seem to think we’re here to take the girl away.” He shot Owen a confused expression, visible even through the mask and breather apparatus on his face. “Any insight you want to offer?”

“Mirror Fog really did keep you kids away from other Supers, didn’t he?” Titan gave a small shake of his head. “Powereds with abilities that are a severe danger to others, ones like hers, are often put in ‘protective custody’ until they find a way to let them safely interact with society. Usually some tech-genius can slap a suit or something on them, but there’s always rumors of people never being heard from again.” Owen pointedly refrained from commenting on his own suspicions of the validity regarding those rumors. There were more important things at the moment.

“I can see how he’d be worried about that,” Galvanize said, sparing a moment to glance at the growing amount of fire filling the building. “But we need to get them out. I’m going to have to ask you to pick them up and remove them forcefully.”

“You open to a suggestion?”

“I’ll hear it out,” Galvanize assured him.

“They’re here to protect the girl. If I take her out, they’ll follow on their own. Faster and safer,” Owen pointed out.

“True but. . . well, I guess you’re allowed to deal with her. But be gentle: Powered or not, she’s still a person.”

In that moment, Owen’s grudging respect for the young man leading this team of corporate shills metamorphosed into genuine affection. Job be damned, he liked this kid.

“Don’t worry,” Owen assured him, stepping past the older man still jabbering in a language he couldn’t understand. Dimly, he felt a pair of hands grip his bicep, some poorly thought out attempt at stopping him. His assailant, like countless others who’d tried such things before, was in for disappointment.

Owen continued forward, kneeling down next the metal tub and staring at the girl in the face. He smiled at her, his big, wide, corny grin that had endeared him to the hearts of the public so many years ago. It seemed he still had a bit of his old charming magic left, because the girl stopped crying long enough to turn and look at him.

“Are you okay?” His voice was calm and gentle, ignoring the urgency of the situation around him.

“No,” she said, her words high-pitched, hoarse, and heartbreaking. “I can’t stop this time. I keep trying and it won’t stop.”

“Don’t worry,” Owen assured her. “I’ll get you out of here. We’ll go out to your apartment’s pool and help you cool down. Does that sound okay?”

She shook her head fiercely. “I can’t leave. I can’t get up. I’ll burn people. I’ve burned Papa and Mama and my sister and our house. . . I burn everything.”

With great care, Owen reached out his hand and brought it down on top of her head, momentarily smothering out the flames before they regrouped and dashed across his skin. The girl tried to pull away, but he held fast, holding his hand there long enough to send the message. Then, he pulled it away and held his fingers in front of her face.

“You can’t burn me. I’m special, like you. No matter how scared you get, no matter how hot you get, you can’t hurt me. I promise.”

Her eyes grew wide (an unsettling sight since they were still coated in flames) as she stared at his unmarred skin. Not even the hair from the back of his knuckles had been singed. She reached out and grasped his fingers with hers, ever so carefully, and watched in amazement as the fire coating her failed to scorch him in the slightest.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Titan. What’s yours?”

“Alexandria.”

“Well, Alexandria, how about that swim?”

She nodded, and he reached over, delicately scooping her out of her metal washtub and pulling her against his chest. His uniform crackled and wrinkled as she came into the contact with it, but his words held true as the fire proved unable to burn him.

“Ready when you are,” Titan told Galvanize, who gave a quick nod and hurriedly escorted the rest of the apartment’s occupants to the stairs. Titan followed, even more careful with his steps than before.

11.

         It took a good ten minutes of submersion in the apartment complex’s pool, now partially filled with ash, before Alexandria’s cloak of flames started to dissipate. Titan spent that time talking with her, asking her about life and school, pretending he wasn’t gently holding her face above water while the rest of her body sent steam billowing into the late-morning air. Before taking her out of the building, he’d wrapped her in his fire-resistant over-shirt, illustrating one of the many reasons that Heroes always dressed in layers. It had held up well, which was a stroke of good fortune because he was relatively certain she’d have torched through anything else he could have used.

Having fathered Powereds, Titan was more familiar with their condition than most. Their abilities were triggered involuntarily. Sometimes this response was purely physical, like a nervous tic. Sometimes it happened from other stimuli, like sneezing. And for many, their ability was tied to their emotions. So while the water was keeping Alexandria from burning anything else, Titan had a firm suspicion that it was the act of calming her down that finally banished the flames.

The rest of the team had finished checking the building and reported there were no more people left inside. Only Alexandria’s family had stayed behind, too scared to move her and perhaps set something else aflame. With the coast clear, the firefighters had pulled out and focused on getting the blaze under control. Galvanize, Hexcellent, Bubble Bubble, and Zone had all gathered out in front of the smoking building to catch the eye of various reporters and news crews that were gathering on the scene. Technically, Titan should be with them, but he felt he was doing better work standing waist deep in dirty water, getting a little girl down from her emotional rollercoaster.

“Titan, the Powered girl’s transport is en route. Estimate arrival in five point two minutes.” Dispatch’s voice hummed in his ear, nearly startling him. He’d forgotten about the earpiece already. It would take some time for the Hero habits to kick back in. At least he’d remembered to call the incident in. A person with her ability and no control needed some serious help.

“Understood.” Titan tapped the side of his mask covering his ear as Alexandria looked on curiously. He stuck out his thumb and pinky, making an “I’m on the phone” gesture to explain his apparent discussion with no one. “The secondary transport as well?”

“Yes, another car for the girl’s family is paired with the one for her. They will not be able to ride in the same vehicle.”

Titan smiled down at the girl, but inwardly winced. If he threw her into a mysterious van without so much as a friendly face, it was highly likely she would flare up again. The team getting her would have things to control her fire, but it wouldn’t be a great first impression.

“I can accompany. There shouldn’t be any danger for me.”

“It was never an issue of danger. We have equipment to completely neutralize a fire-conjurer of the level you described; however, that equipment occupies a large amount of space. We cannot fit anyone in the van aside from the driver and the Powered.”

Damn, there went that idea. If a normal person couldn’t fit, then Titan had no chance of squeezing in. He was still trying to think of another way to help when Dispatch's voice grabbed his attention again.

“Titan, another Hero has flagged your location as a destination. Gale is currently en route.”

“Make that ‘arrived.’”

The new voice came from a source high above the pool: a woman floating forty feet in the air. She wore a green and black outfit: standard pants and top paired with a matching ankle-length coat. It fluttered out behind her, billowing in the breeze as she began to descend.

She was halfway down when Titan realized there was no breeze. That probably meant air-elementalist, and if she had enough oomph to fly herself without riding on something as ostentatious as a hurricane, then she must be a pretty good one. Her brunette hair flitted about as she descended, coming to rest a few inches below her shoulders when she finally landed.

“Gale, I presume?”

The woman, Gale, nodded, and then flashed a warm smile at Alexandria. She turned her attention back to the man in the soot-covered outfit a moment later. “And you’re Titan, or so I’m told.”

“That I am.”

“From what I heard, Titan left the business years ago. So that leaves me with a question: original or legacy?” Her tone was cheerful, and the smile she’d shown Alexandria had only faded a bit, yet Titan could still sense the tension in her body as she quizzed him. He didn’t blame her; the return of someone as legendarily infamous as himself was bound to stir up a lot of something. Maybe it would be bad, maybe it would be good, but it would be something.

“Original,” Titan replied. “Just reinstated, actually. You caught me on my first job.”

“A burning building? Interesting choice for a strongman.”

“Long story,” Titan said with a sigh.

“Are you really Gale?” This question came from neither of the registered Heroes, but rather from the small girl who had finally stopped burning a few minutes prior. Both adults looked at her, realizing they had something more important on their hands than a pissing contest.

“I really am,” Gale told her. She took a step off the edge of the concrete and began to hover over the water, making small ripples below her feet as she glided across the water’s surface. “See? I can fly and everything.”

Seeing her interact kindly with Alexandria, it struck Titan that Gale was quite pretty, a fact that was evident even through the mask that concealed all save for her eyes, a bit of nose, and from the mouth downward. Dark skin, full lips, and likely a fit body beneath all the armored clothing she wore. If his inclinations had lain in that direction, he’d have been a bit tempted to ask for her number.

“You came to speak at our school last year,” Alexandria said. “You talked about how being a Hero meant making good choices, even for young people like us.”

“And I meant every word,” Gale assured her.

Alexandria nodded, even though nothing had been asked of her. The girl was clearly star-struck. Titan would have bet dollars to donuts that somewhere in the cinders of her now-charred room were the remains of a Gale poster. That thought, sad as it was, gave him an idea.

“Gale, maybe you can help me—us—out,” he said carefully. “I’ve got friends who are coming to take Alexandria and her family somewhere secure, where she won’t have to worry about setting things on fire. Unfortunately, her car will be too small for anyone else to ride with her, but I want her to know she’s still got people watching over her. Are you free to fly alongside her car and make sure she arrives safely?”

“Of course I can,” Gale said, giving the young girl another comforting smile. “That works out well, actually. I wanted to see if you had some free time later on to chat, so now we can meet up after and I can assure you everything went fine.”

Titan had known he was handing out a favor by asking her to do escort duty, but he hadn’t expected her to cash it in immediately. Clearly she wanted to know about his return as soon as possible. From the way Alexandria had recognized her and her skill at diplomacy, it seemed a fair guess that she was one of the better known Heroes in the city, which meant she likely also belonged to one of the top teams. He’d hoped to avoid getting too mixed up in the Hero world before he settled in here, but it looked like that wasn’t going to happen.

Oh well. At least he was going to get something out of it.

“Sounds like a great idea,” Titan agreed.

12.

              “Nice job.”

Mr. Greene was the first thing the team saw when they stepped through the door of their base; he stood between the living room and the kitchen, wearing an almost aggressively neutral expression.

“Thank you, sir,” Galvanize responded immediately. “We were thankful to get everyone out with no injuries or deaths. It was a good day.”

“Very good,” Mr. Greene amended. “The firefighters actually went on record thanking you for your help, the footage of Zone leaping into the building is being picked up by a station running the story, and the post-rescue photos came out looking quite striking.”