Making Supers 1, page 23
“Maybe I’ll grow on you,” I said with a smile. “I’ve got some questions.”
Piper squared her shoulders. “Guess I owe you that much. Shoot.”
“Your powers were healing and helping out other supes, right?”
“Were?” Piper asked.
I exhaled slowly. “Hoo boy, this’ll be fun.”
“What do you mean, were?” she demanded.
“I stole them,” I said bluntly. “That’s my own power. It never came up, and I never noticed it until I started scrapping with supes. I got called an ATM for superpowers, which I guess is pretty accurate. If I can touch a supe, I can steal their powers, and store them.”
Piper stared at me in horror. “So it’s true? You can do that?”
“Hear about it on the grapevine?”
“Just rumors,” she whispered, horrified. “I can’t believe this... doesn’t make any sense.”
“Another thing you’ll need to accept, but I promise you, there’s a reason behind it. But yeah, that’s my thing. And that’s the reason that you’ve got a couple of crippled or dead supes in the last few days. Pinnacle started it when they sent Darkstalker after me.”
Piper pulled her feet up and hugged her knees. “They—”
“Wouldn’t do that?” I asked. “After everything you’ve seen, you really think that?”
She shook her head to herself. “I’ve been there for two weeks, and I still want to believe that this is all some massive misunderstanding. That I must’ve read some propaganda, or that someone was just messing with me.”
“Dad’s information on you said that you were in the PR line of work for Pinnacle,” I said. “Which means you must’ve been able to see through the curtain. How many supes abused their power? How much dirty laundry did you have to kick under the bed?”
She shook her head. “That wasn’t my area. I covered supervillains.”
“And once you found out that Pinnacle could control the supply and demand for supervillains, it didn’t line up with what you were selling to the press,” I guessed. “And, being someone with integrity, you decided to do something about it.”
“It isn’t right,” Piper whispered.
“You’re damn right it isn’t,” I said. “What I don’t understand is how they do it, and where the powers come from in the first place. Common narrative, I’ve heard, is that you’re born with superhuman abilities, and Pinnacle snaps up the hopefuls when they appear.”
“That’s right.”
“So how do you make a supe?” I pressed. “The Outreach Center was a cover for a private power plant. They strung up six of the people they said they were ‘helping’, and used them as human batteries.”
Piper looked horrified. “You saw this?”
“Why do you think the place caught fire?” I replied.
“What happened to them?”
“They were beyond saving,” I said grimly. “And if they’d gotten loose, they would’ve killed dozens of industrial workers in the local area. I took preventative measures, and knocked Scourge out for good while I was at it. But they weren’t regular supes, that much I can tell you. If they were, I could’ve taken their powers, left them human. And I couldn’t manage it.”
“So Pinnacle can make superheroes and supervillains,” Piper murmured. “Which means all of it is artificial. We’re essentially glorified lab experiments.” She hugged her knees tighter and rocked back and forth a little. Her face tightened into a mask of horror. “They build us up, and then throw supervillains out into the world to give us something to do. Like it’s all a game of chess.”
“And Pinnacle are always the winners,” I said. “What’d you do for them?”
“I was one of their models for a while,” she said. “I hated it, but it was my in. Once I pushed past that and my powers developed, they had me running campaigns for them, being an influencer, and I kept tabs on the press. Had my own stable of journalists and everything.” She huffed out a humorless laugh. “It was my job to make sure people loved Pinnacle. To make sure that they got excited every time that we showed up. I was always on the back end, healing civilians who’d been caught in the crossfire of supervillain attacks.”
“So how’d you figure out that they were playing you?”
“When one of my supervisors took me out for drinks.” Piper shivered. “He let something slip, something stupid. Said something about the airport being in the near future, and that we’d have to hold our horses until it was serious enough to justify going in.”
“The airport?”
“Yeah. Which made no sense to me. Because how the hell would we know that we were supposed to be there? Why the airport? I tried to ask him about it, but he stonewalled me. I thought about it the next morning, worked through the hangover, and realized that he knew people were going to die. And that we’d be there to pick up the pieces, stop the bad guy, and look good for the cameras.”
“What day?” I pressed.
“I don’t know,” Piper mumbled. “This was three weeks ago. Could be any day now.”
“Fuck,” I said quietly. “It was bustling when I got here.”
“It’ll be busier now, after the mess you’ve made,” she said. “You’re challenging Pinnacle behind closed doors, but my guess is that everyone is convinced that there’s a major supervillain group coming at Pinnacle. That’s how they’ll have spun it.”
“And people are scared. They’ll want to get the hell out of here.”
Piper nodded. “And that makes the airport perfect for them. I couldn’t get a sense of when exactly it was, but he did say that it’d be over the weekend. Tension’s high, right now, and breaking me out will just push their schedule up first. I can’t imagine that they’re happy about losing face with the Outreach Center.”
“So we’ve got a doomsday clock now, too. Great.” I let a breath hiss through my teeth, glanced down at my pistols, and ran some rapid numbers. “Not looking good for the home team.”
“You’ve got powers, though, don’t you?” Piper asked.
“Sure, sometimes. Depends on the scenario. And I’ve got a couple of badass girls ready to throw down against Pinnacle. But that’s three of us against an invisible, casualty-heavy threat. And, if it wasn’t enough, we get to play dodgeball with the supes while we’re at it.”
“Any normal person would be freaking out about it,” Piper said.
I let the grin I’d been hiding split my face. “Yeah, they would.”
“What are you going to do?”
I met her icy blue eyes. “You wanna do something about Pinnacle? I mean, really do something?”
“I want to protect the people of this city,” Piper said, with the barest hint of steel in her tone. “That’s what I’ve always wanted. They might’ve programmed it into my head, turned me into their pinup girl, and used me to cover up everything they’ve done. But I’ll do anything to help Empyrion’s citizens.”
“See anyone else interested in stopping a vague threat?”
Piper’s mouth tightened into a hard line. “No.”
“So, wanna join the team?”
Her eyes fell to the guns again and met my face. She nodded once.
“I’ll help you any way I can. If you really took my powers, it might not be much, but—”
“You’ve already given us plenty,” I assured her. “And I took your powers because I thought your head might explode. But you’ve already given the game away, and you’re still here, so I’m pretty sure they haven’t got you fitted with a kill-switch.”
Piper’s eyes flashed with just the right kind of danger. “They can go to hell.”
“Welcome aboard.” I laughed. “Now let’s figure out how to stop the biggest terrorist attack in the city’s history, shall we?”
Chapter 31
Giselle appeared at the stairs like a damn beauty-product commercial. She had herself wrapped in a pristine white towel, her strawberry-blonde hair was tied up in a bun, and every inch of her glowed from the shower and no small amount of soap and scrubbing.
Piper’s eyes fell on her and almost dropped out of her head. She stared at my partner with something approaching worship but shook herself out of it a moment later.
“You’re onboard, then?” Giselle asked and strolled over to join us.
“I mean, I definitely am now,” Piper said, mostly to herself.
“Giselle, what have I told you about seducing the help?”
“Nothing, and the show was mostly for you,” Giselle said, with a flirtatious smile.
I tried to push away the sudden image of Piper and Giselle together with me in a quiet room, when I remembered that I was in a bed and breakfast and realized it’d be damn close to impossible to avoid. The brief battle against my glands ended in my narrow victory.
I wrangled my thoughts in order as Giselle pulled out a chair and settled down beside Piper.
Color flushed through the new girl’s cheeks, and she tried to look anywhere except Giselle. Her eyes fell to me with a silent plea for help.
I just shook my head with a grin. “How much did you catch, Giselle?”
“Something about certain doom?”
“Distinctly probable doom,” I corrected her. “We’ve got word that a supervillain will attack the airport, and if we’re going to do something about it, we need to be on-site and ready to stop them before they get started.”
“And how do we know about this?” Giselle asked.
I gave her the lowdown on Pinnacle’s complete ownership of the superhero shenanigans. She hissed a curse, folded her arms, and leaned back in her chair.
“Well, shit,” Giselle surmised.
“We need eyes on the airport,” I said. “Especially the terminals. “
“I’ll reach out to Gwen,” Giselle nodded. “I’m sure she’s got a way to watch the cameras, or to get eyeballs on the place if she needs to. But we’ll have a tougher time getting in there.”
“Why?” Piper asked.
Giselle and I stifled a laugh, and a crestfallen expression fell onto Piper’s gorgeous features. I raised a hand to stall her complaint.
“We’re wanted fugitives,” I reminded her. “Giselle, how’d you go with the cameras?”
“Scrubbed them as clean as I could, under the time constraints. They’ll need a digital forensics team to put anything together, and after how badly we fucked up their drones, that’ll take time. But that still doesn’t help us, because I’ve got a feeling that if Pinnacle’s looking to nuke the terminals, they’ll have their own sets of eyes in there, and they’ve seen enough of us in the last couple of days to have an idea of what to look for.”
I nodded. “Fair point. I’ll dig out a fake mustache.”
Piper bit her lip. “Interjection?”
“Go ahead, cutie,” Giselle encouraged her. “Dean likes to run his mouth.”
“You said you took my powers,” Piper said. “And that you could give them back. If we’re all going to be working together, isn’t it a good idea to have as many superpowered people as we can?”
Giselle and I exchanged a glance, and I nodded. “Yeah. But the process is a little—”
“—hot and heavy,” Giselle finished, with a wicked wink at Piper.
The poor girl turned a deeper shade of red. “Am I missing something?”
“Everything I understand about the transferal involves sex,” I clarified. “It’s how I realized I could do it. With Giselle. Gwen got a turn, and now she’s pretty much the scariest shooter I’ve ever seen in my life. But that’s not something you drop on someone straight away.”
Piper’s gaze bounced between Giselle and me like she was watching a tennis match.
“This isn’t a joke, is it?” Piper asked, quietly.
“Sure isn’t,” Giselle assured her. “Trust me, it’s a lot better than he makes it sound.”
“And you’re telling me that you can pick what powers you give who? If you’re really some kind of ATM machine?” Piper clarified. “Exactly how many powers do you have access to?”
I pulled up my invisible window of abilities and scanned through them.
Safe Zone Found!
Power Selection Enabled
Active Powers (1 of 2)
Speedburst
Stored Powers
Shadow Stealth
Lock Breach
Resilience
Barrier
Speedburst
Stamina
Refill Container
Darkvision
Accuracy
Healing Hands
Reinforce Allies
My eyes fixed on the ‘Active Powers’ section of the window for a moment. I still didn’t have a handle on how Safe Zones worked in my power set, but Marci’s was considered one of them, and it looked like I’d now found a way to activate two powers at once, rather than just one.
The sheer potential of it sent a thrill of excitement down my spine, but I raised my eyes to the girls and rattled off the list of powers that I had at my disposal.
Piper’s mouth dropped open, and she made a confused, choking sound.
“I’ve never heard of anything like this before,” she said.
“Join the club,” I told her. “My feeling is that you’ll want your own powers back, but I figure we can add in an extra for you from amongst this list. Something that helps complement what you can already do.”
Giselle frowned thoughtfully. “Maybe Barrier? If you’ve had enough of being the tank?”
Piper looked at Giselle as if she’d just started speaking another language. “Come again?”
“Means that you could very well end up being our best support member of the team,” I clarified. “Healing, helping those around you, with the extra ability to throw up a wall that can stop just about anything? Sounds like a nice addition.”
Piper took a moment to get the words out. “How does it work?”
“You pretty much will a shield into existence,” I said. “It can take a couple of rifle rounds, easy, and probably more besides. And the more you use it, the better you’ll become at it. Giselle started off only mostly invisible, but if you tried to spot her in a long shadow these days—”
“You won’t spot me,” Giselle said confidently.
“Incredible,” Piper breathed. “So you’re the new Darkstalker?”
Giselle made a face. “Fuck no. But I do have his powers.”
The newest member of our team shook her head to herself again. “Just so I’m following correctly, you can steal superpowers from Pinnacle, and create your own superheroines. Which is amazing. But Pinnacle’s got a lot more going for them than you do.”
“There’s more of them, they’ve got more experience with their powers, and they pretty much have the local government in their pockets,” I summarized. “Hard to disagree with you.”
“Their biggest weapon has always been public support,” Piper said. “You’re right about all of the rest, of course, but they can only do what they do because we used to run the best PR, and there were hundreds of thousands of people who backed us. That kind of power is hard to maintain, and it’s fragile. If Pinnacle loses the citizens, it’ll cripple them.”
“The Basement’s been trying to undermine Pinnacle for years,” Giselle argued.
“But they’re fringe,” Piper countered. “And everyone loves the idea of superheroes who can do anything from save their cats from trees to stop a terrorist attack.” Her eyes lit up as she glanced between Giselle and me again. “Why not hit them where it hurts the most? Their popularity on the world stage?”
“How would you go about doing it?” I asked, intrigued.
“Start your own team of superheroes,” Piper suggested. “I mean, if what you say is true, you’ve already got three if you include yourself. Add me into it, and you have four.”
“Pinnacle wouldn’t stand for that,” Giselle said. “They’d call us supervillains, watch us like hawks, and turn the entire thing into a dick-measuring contest for PR.”
“You have to start somewhere,” Piper replied. “I might know a little bit about publicity and presentation. You give the people new superheroes to believe in? Ones that don’t follow Pinnacle’s own policies? You’ve suddenly created competition for them.”
“Competition is good for business,” I agreed.
Giselle frowned. “They’d want to crush us.”
“I’m sorry, they don’t already?” Piper giggled.
Giselle’s frown deepened. “What exactly do you have in mind?”
“If there’s going to be an attack this weekend,” I said slowly, “then we can cockblock Pinnacle before they can turn up and look good for the cameras. If we look and talk like superheroes, we’ll stand out, but we can get to the threat before Pinnacle does and stop it.”
“That’d work?” Giselle asked.
“Giselle, I asked you to help me sneak into a Pinnacle building and steal information from them,” I reminded her. “Hell, you pretty much took out most of the Outreach Center’s guards. If I’d met you before all of this and asked if it was possible, you’d have laughed in my face.”
“True,” she admitted.
“Every time we’ve hit Pinnacle, we’ve looked like shady mercs, not supes. If we turn up in the right colors, Piper could get us past the security. And we’d be there before the bodies start dropping, and in a better situation to do something about it.” My crazy grin returned, with interest. “It’s a long shot, but it’s better than a whole lot of ambiguity.”
Giselle met my eyes with a raised eyebrow. “Alright, so you have your party. But what about what Brandon said about loot? And starting a raid?”
I turned to Piper. “You were in the PR section, right?”
“That’s right,” she replied.
“Do you know who puts together Pinnacle’s supe outfits?” I asked.
“Sure do, I was one of his main contacts for adjustments to outfits for field use,” Piper said. “He’s hard to get into touch with, an honest-to-god genius with textiles and armor, and loves his privacy. But he had a soft spot for me.”
“How hard would it be to convince him to make new suits?” Giselle asked.
