Ultrahuman 01 - Ugly (22 page)

‘But they’d need a direct hit?’

‘Uh-huh. The missile’s way faster than you, but it probably has less manoeuvrability, and you can go a lot
slower
than it can.’

‘Outfly the thing?’

‘I think, if it comes to it, that’s your best bet.’

Penny blanched. ‘I hope Bobby’s lessons are paying off then.’

29
^th
October.

There were sirens again and Penny’s heart sank. It was fairly early, just before eight, and she had not expected to see much. Instead there were police cars, ambulances, and fire engines heading down Uptown’s 10
^th
Street. She diverted her course over the buildings, located the cars already at the site, and flew in.

There was no sign of a fire, but Svetilo was already there, talking to a uniformed officer and Special Agent Dannon. There was a cordon of cars surrounding the entrance to a shopping mall. Penny had never been in the thing as the prices were sky high and everything had some designer’s name on it. If she remembered right, there was even a designer hero costume shop in there.

Penny dropped to the ground beside the little group, nodding to Svetilo and Dannon. ‘When I heard the sirens I thought Thermite was up to his tricks again…’

‘And you are right,’ Svetilo said, ‘except that he has added some hostage-taking to his usual résumé.’

Penny frowned. ‘Not entirely new. He’s held hostages before. He pulled a bank job in Red Bank, New Jersey, and took hostages when the police surrounded the building.’

The lieutenant standing with them looked at her. ‘Did he get away?’

‘They caught him, eventually. That was after he incinerated the hostages and most of the bank.’ There was a bleak look on her face as she said it. ‘He’s going to kill those people.’

‘He’ll have some sort of escape plan…’

‘Don’t count on it. He likes burning things. What was he doing in there anyway?’

‘Information is,’ Dannon said, ‘that he marched up to the second floor and into UltraStyle demanding they fit him with a new suit.’

‘He’s blasted the elevator and the staircases are on fire,’ the lieutenant continued. ‘The interior is open, he’s got a clear view of the entrance. We can’t get anyone in there without him turning them to ash. We don’t even have good intelligence on how he’s set up.’

‘What we need,’ Svetilo said, ‘is a stealth specialist. Someone like…’

‘Me?’ Twilight suggested, walking up from behind Penny.

‘I am starting to think we should get to know each other better, Twilight,’ Svetilo said, grinning broadly. ‘You don’t happen to be a blonde, do you?’

Twilight gave her a look. ‘Can I get in through the roof?’

‘Fire sensors say the stairwells are burning,’ Dannon supplied.

‘In that case I’m going to need a distraction.’

‘I can do that,’ Penny stated flatly. She turned and started for the door of the mall. ‘You said it was open in there, right? Let’s see if he’s any good at hitting a moving target.’

‘Are you nuts?!’ Dannon asked.

‘I thought we’d established that, Special Agent,’ Penny replied as Twilight fell into step beside her. Penny glanced at her partner. ‘His blasts cover a wide area, but they’ve got lousy range. He probably can’t hit with full force at the door if he’s near the back, but it’ll still give you crispy edges if you’re caught in it, so move fast.’

‘I can move faster than you, if I have to,’ Twilight replied.

‘I know. I’m just saying… Be careful. I want Thermite, but I’m not willing to lose you to get him.’

Twilight flashed her a grin. ‘Aww, I didn’t know you cared. Just keep him off me for a second. That’s enough.’

Penny stopped at the door. The glass was shattered and the metalwork of the frame was blackened and half-melted. Worse, a few yards inside were two bodies, or the twisted, charred remains of two bodies. They were holding guns in semi-skeletal hands.

‘Ready?’ Penny growled, lifting into the air.

‘I’ll be in right on your tail.’

Penny powered forward, accelerating into the building. There was a portico with a couple of kiosks lining it, and then she was into a wide plaza that went up four storeys to a glass ceiling. The ground level had had seating until Thermite had tossed a couple of heat blasts down from…

She spotted a man on the first balcony at the back with dark, unkempt hair. He was dressed in prison overalls and a camouflage coat. The visit to UltraStyle seemed like a good idea, given his current look. Penny guessed she had around twenty-five yards to turn in, and Thermite was a psychopath, not a soldier. Somewhere in his back brain, he had seen her enter the room, but his conscious mind had not received the message. She pulled up, swinging past the balcony for a closer look.

Twilight slipped into the building behind Cygnus, dropping to a crouch to look up at the far end. She spotted Thermite, knew he had barely taken in her partner’s passage into the room yet, never mind seeing the slim, black-clad figure in the shadows of the portico behind her. He was on the second level and there were two floors above him. Her eyes flicked to the left, checking the balcony on the third floor. Teleporting was a matter of simple will; she wished to be elsewhere and she moved. The difficult bit was the mental gymnastics she went through to work out how her body should move in space-time to get to where she wanted. She had never really understood how it worked; it was just some sort of special extra sense that let her do it, and now it worked perfectly. She breathed out on the ground floor and in on the third-storey landing.

Penny swung past Thermite, maybe five yards away, and scanned the balcony and the shop front behind it. He had set up in front of UltraStyle; convenient for him. She spotted two people kneeling in the doorway, their hands tied behind their backs; someone else was just about visible inside the shop. Most of the view was obscured by four manikins dressed in the latest heroic outfit styles. Part of Penny’s brain noted that her own costume seemed to be fairly à la mode; brief and high-hipped featured on one of the female dummies.

She turned, swinging around to face the door as she prepared to make her exit. Twilight was moving along the balcony above Thermite, heading for the front. It was definitely time to leave. Tightening her turn, she poured on the power and headed for the door.

Twilight got about two-thirds of the way down the balcony and paused to check the situation below. Cygnus was leaving, but it looked like Thermite’s brain had caught up with his eyes. He raised his hand and a bolt of red-orange light flared from his palm, missing Cygnus by a mile and slamming into the balcony across from Twilight. The effect was still dramatic. Glass exploded, and concrete glowed an incandescent shade of red. The dummies in the windows of two shops were reduced to molten pools of burning plastic in a second. Swallowing hard, Twilight continued moving.

Penny felt the backwash of the explosion above and ahead of her, and poured on the power. She was out and banking up and left before he had a chance to try again. Turning, she swept back to street level, landing beside Dannon and Svetilo.

‘He’s a floor up,’ she said, ‘at the back, right outside UltraStyle. He’s got two hostages in the doorway, at least one more in the shop. Oh, and he’s a lousy shot.’

Dannon was holding a radio and it spoke with Twilight’s voice. ‘He doesn’t need to be a good one. If that was a long-range hit, and weaker, I don’t want to see what it does at full power. I’ll be in position in another couple of seconds. I’ll talk then.’

‘Do we
know
how many hostages he has?’ Penny asked.

‘No,’ Dannon replied, glancing around as the lieutenant returned from wherever he had been.

‘No, we don’t,’ the policeman agreed. ‘He let a lot of people just run out, but we don’t know how many he pushed into the shop. I doubt there were many customers in UltraStyle itself, though they do sell fancy-dress versions of famous costumes for normals.’

‘I can confirm six,’ Twilight said over the radio. ‘Thermite’s looking pissed off. He’s waving a pistol around and screaming obscenities. It’s a Desert Eagle, one of the big ones, fifty calibre.’ There was a pause where they could hear ranting in the background and then, ‘He’s yelling down. He wants to make demands.’

Scowling and looking nervous, the lieutenant turned and headed for the door.

‘What are our options?’ Penny asked. ‘Can we get in some way? The roof was glass.’

‘Too risky,’ Svetilo said. ‘You might be able to get to him before he could launch one of those blasts, but you would get one shot, and then be ploughing into the balcony. If he was still standing, he would kill you, and the hostages.’

‘Svetilo’s right,’ Twilight said. ‘You’re fast enough, but hitting him where he is is asking a lot at that speed. Wait until we find out what his demands are. The lieutenant is calling up to him now…’

They waited for what seemed like an age, but was probably only fifteen seconds. Then they heard Twilight again. ‘Shit… He says he has eight hostages, which he could have. He says he’ll let them all go if Cygnus will take their place.’

Penny gave a nod. ‘Okay,’ she said.

‘Net! He’ll kill you!’ Svetilo exclaimed.

‘He’ll try. Look, we need to get in, we need the hostages out. I can get to him a lot faster, and more safely, if I’m in there with him. I can act as decoy for Twilight to blindside him. This is the only way to go where we avoid more casualties.’

‘It is not…’

‘She’s right,’ Dannon said, his expression one of annoyance. ‘I don’t like this. Why does he want
you
of all people? This stinks.’

‘Maybe the Tonaldos are paying him,’ Penny suggested. ‘It doesn’t really matter right now. We need to get those people out.’

‘You heard what he wants?’ the lieutenant asked as he returned.

‘Uh-huh,’ Penny replied. ‘Get your people ready to receive the hostages. I’m going in.’ She looked around at Svetilo. ‘No argument.’

Svetilo scowled at her. ‘It is supposed to be Russians who are stubborn.’

~~~

Penny floated into the mall at a much slower pace than before. If Thermite had been contracted to kill her, he might just try it as she came in. Then he could keep his hostages, job done, and bargain for his freedom. She was banking on him wanting her close up. He would want to see her burn for one thing, and there was his lousy aim.

‘Here’s how we do this.’ She looked up to see the bedraggled psychopath looking down from the balcony, a huge, chrome-plated pistol in his hand. ‘You land over there…’ He waved toward his left with the gun. ‘I got a fire ladder here that these pricks can climb down. When they get to the door, you come to me. You try an’ run, I turn you into smoke.’

Not replying, Penny slid herself sideways and upward, over the balustrade and down onto the balcony. She figured she was about fifteen yards from Thermite, but she would have to round a corner to get to him. From her current location she could see him and the front door.

‘All right,’ Thermite said, his tone pleased. ‘You lot, move it. Get out of here before I change my mind and singe your tails on the way out.’

Someone, a man, ran to the balustrade with some sort of emergency ladder which was fixed in place and dropped, and then it seemed to take forever for the eight people to climb down. The man who had deployed the ladder was the first down, and then waited at the bottom to steady it for the others. He was the last out and he glanced up at Penny with a thankful, worried expression before turning and running toward the exit.

As he crossed the threshold, Penny walked around the balcony to the front of UltraStyle. Thermite backed away a few steps as she approached, waving with his gun to indicate that she should go inside. There was little light in there; the fires had taken out the power and the only illumination came down through the roof of the main plaza.

‘Why did you ask for me?’ she asked as she approached him.

‘You’ve been on the news,’ he replied. ‘The bimbo in the swimsuit. I saw you come in earlier, knew you were here.’

‘No other reason? I caught your attention?’

‘Something like that. Get inside, bitch.’

Penny bit back a reply and turned, walking in through the open door. She just had time to register the dozen people kneeling on the floor at the back of the shop before he shot her in the back. She felt the sting of the large projectile landing between her shoulder blades, took a step forward, and then turned, glaring at him.

‘You lying bastard!’ she yelled. ‘You’ve got more hostages!’

‘Yeah,’ Thermite replied, grinning at her. ‘I lied. Lied about why you’re here too. Someone wants you dead. Don’t know why he wants you dead. Don’t care.’ He pushed his pistol into his pocket and raised his hand. ‘I owe him and this clears the debt.’

Penny glared at him. The shouting had not really been for his benefit and now she needed to delay him as long as possible. There was no way she was going to get to him in time if she moved now, but she had backup.

‘Do you remember Red Bank?’ she asked. ‘Little town in New Jersey. You robbed a bank there.’

‘Red Bank… Yeah, I remember the heat, an’ the burning bodies.’

‘Two of them were my parents.’

‘You should thank me then. You’ll be seeing them again
real soon.
’

He straightened his arm, preparing to launch a blast at her. Penny tensed, waiting to feel the heat envelop her. And then the point of a sword emerged from the front of Thermite’s chest. He looked down at it, his arm dropping to his side.

‘Not today she isn’t,’ Twilight said from behind him as she yanked her blade free.

Unsupported, Thermite dropped to his knees and then toppled forward, collapsing onto the thickly carpeted floor. Twilight stepped forward and knelt beside him, pressing her fingers to his neck.

‘Is he alive?’ Penny asked, her voice flat.

‘There’s a pulse. I can make there not be…’

Penny’s fists clenched. Her head half-turned, indicating the people behind them. ‘No… No, we aren’t killing him today.’ The look she gave Twilight suggested that the civilians were the only thing stopping her. ‘I’ll get some paramedics and cops up here.’ She started toward the door.