Wilderness Hannah, page 18
part #3 of Damsel Series
“Good work. Should you be taking them to do that?”
“I don’t know? We can talk about it. I’m really trying to work out how to appease Superion in all of this, to tell the truth. Getting Reese to handle this might work? He has a right to see to this. More than anyone except Megan.”
They were healed, and back to normal, so, when they stepped through, they just stayed that way, even as the magic let go of them.
As Hannah stepped through, followed by Debbie and the collapse of the rift, it occurred to her that she was in the dark, about a lot of things. One of them was simply how Debbie, who wasn’t a mage, could open portals like she could. Only to the one place, or so it seemed.
The other, of course, was what they were going to do to Sendra now. Veronica’s sister. Diaspora’s sister. It could be messy, if either of them didn’t want the same thing that Red Cape or his family did, in response to the murders.
Things that Hannah had just been thinking would never happen. Even the bad guys were supposed to know better than to go after the families. Everyone with a brain knew that. Which meant, clearly, that Doctor Sendra had no brain.
Chapter twelve
“My dad is Superion X?” For some reason Reese seemed a bit doubtful of that fact. Even though Superion didn’t run around in a mask, ended up in the news at least twice a week, and as far as Hannah could tell, wasn’t shape shifting, to look different, around his family.
They weren’t pointing and screaming that this wasn’t the man they knew or anything, at least.
Megan hugged her son, her long brown hair loose and slightly tangled. She was better, repaired, but still had mats, made from her own blood.
“We were going to tell you when you went off to college. You can’t tell anyone, and we didn’t want to dump that kind of a burden on a child.”
She actually sounded as if there was about to be a rather large problem over the vile lies they’d told, protecting the boy. It actually started to happen, standing there in the basement of Lash and Debbie’s house in the suburbs. To her that felt out of place, but after being tortured to death, the kid, and the wife, had good reason to kind of freak out. Hannah probably would have, if it had been her. She knew that one for a fact, actually. She’d been in a similar place before, in her life.
She held up her right hand.
“Reese?” There was a strained look in her direction, the heavily breathing kid staring at her for about ten seconds, before he nodded. Without her doing more than muttering his name.
“Yeah. Sorry. We can do this later. What’s the plan right now? That insane woman...”
She agreed with that one, so nodded.
“That’s my thought, too. We know who she is, where she’s headed and that she’s sane enough to have tried to run, after torturing and killing two people. She’s headed toward Little Paradise, a tropical island about four thousand miles away. Her father, the mad scientist, Doctor Pond, lives there and has control of that place, outside of any country or controlling state. Odds are, if she reaches that place, they won’t just hand her over, given that.” Not that they couldn’t have simply taken her.
Superion X was clearly having that same thought, but his lips tightened.
“The Society can’t be seen as engaging in war with a foreign power. I’ll have to resign. I need to use a phone.” The man sounded very certain of what he had planned. Whatever that was, specifically, it sounded kind of dark, at least to Hannah.
Everyone seemed freaked out, suddenly, as well. Visions of death and destruction coming into their minds, no doubt.
Hannah tilted her head.
“Wait on that? Right now, she’s over international waters. If we can have illegal gambling and sex clubs out there, with no-one being able to do or say anything about it, we can take her from the plane she’s on. She’s fleeing from a crime, so we’re in hot pursuit, right?”
She was making that up, but several of the others seemed to think that was a good enough lie, if nothing else.
Wisp made a strained sound.
“I can’t track a plane in flight, or I could just go and get her. I don’t know how we get there in time.” The words were worried and seemed slightly mechanical, from the voice changer.
Hannah didn’t know, either, but it was clear that sending Superion at that moment was a poor plan. The man was planning to kill, after all. Which she didn’t actually disagree with, truth be told. She spread her hands in a placating fashion, however.
“Red Cape, I need you to stay here. I understand how you feel, but you aren’t a killer. We need to send someone else, given that.” She held up her right hand.
“Look, I know you feel like you could do that, right now, in your rage. The world can’t survive having someone like you doing that, however. We need to go carefully, that way.”
The man actually turned beet red, as if she were planning to steal a prize from him.
“We just let her go, then?”
Interestingly, Debbie laughed a bit then, which had Superion turning to glare at her. It was an odd scene, a tall white man in skin tight spandex, in multiple colors, with blue and red being prominent, suddenly facing off with a much shorter dark-skinned woman in a tan skirt. With sensible shoes on her feet.
Neither gave any ground.
“That isn’t what she just said, Superion. Hannah just said we need to send in a person, or people, who are willing to kill, who, when they do, the world won’t freak out about it having happened. That’s not the kind of thing that we want to be thinking about right now, but it also is a real enough point. You have your family back. You having to go and sit in a prison cell for murder to prove you aren’t a danger to the world helps no-one.”
Hannah had a thought, based on something Red Cape had said once. About Alexander Darius. That they had once been friends. If the bad blood was too deep between them, there would be no aid there. Except that, even if he were considered a super villain, Alex wasn’t truly evil. He just held to strong beliefs. One of which was that aliens and people with freak powers shouldn’t be the ones standing up for the public when the chips were down. That humanity needed to do that for themselves.
Unless, of course, there was no other way.
She pulled her phone, hoping she wasn’t about to have an angry super god backhand her into the next county.
Everyone in the room stared at her, but Superion went wide eyed, when the man spoke. Clearly being able to hear the words.
“Alexander Darius, how may I help you.”
“This is Hannah. Superion X’s family, his wife and son, were tortured and killed by Doctor Sendra of Elysium Labs. She’s Doctor Pond’s daughter and is headed toward his island. We, the Requiem and I, managed to get them back, and they’re alive again, now. Superion can’t go and kill this woman.”
She didn’t say too much, since the man was smart. He understood several things that weren’t being talked about, almost certainly.
“Oh my god. Megan and Reese? Are they all right now? I’ll help. What do you need? I can send a team in for that, when she lands?”
Hannah shook her head.
“Which ends up with people who might be innocent dying. We need to take her over international waters, I think. Our teleporter can’t track a plane in flight for that.”
There was silence for a moment.
“Could this person take in flying forces, do you think? Get ahead of the plane and let them do the work that requires movement? It will be difficult, simply removing a single person from a moving craft, without causing it to fail. Christopher could do it, of course. If he must be held back, and I agree he should be given the situation... Then we need someone who is very fast, in the air. There are a few people who can match a plane in flight like that. Ballistic could do that, perhaps, if he can be gotten into place in time? Also Fade, I believe? Solair, and Solar Storm as well. Perhaps. I don’t know their top speeds.” There was a sound, like typing, then.
Twenty seconds later the man spoke.
“I have nothing on that, as it turns out. No contact data for them, except Ballistic. We were friends, in prison. He’s out now, I understand. Seeking to turn his life around. Also, a psychopath. I can reach out to him. We need several things for this to work, however.”
She nodded, trying to put it all together, inside her head.
“Do it. Wisp, get ready. Alistair, we need to know where that plane is, as exactly as possible. I know that this kind of thing isn’t a perfect use of your power...” She was speaking to the air in the room, as far as everyone else there could tell.
Everyone except Megan and Reese heard his reply.
~I can get Wisp to the right spot, roughly. Can you get the people?~
She nodded, not knowing if it was the case at all. They might not help. Even her own mother and brother might wisely not want to go and murder someone on her say so.
“Get with them for me? The two you can. I’ll do the last one mentioned.”
Fade.
Hannah had never heard of him. She had a name, so tried to focus, just standing there, her phone still in her right hand. She hung that up, not speaking to Alex about the idea. He’d heard the plan, after all.
Hopefully that was enough.
Someone, Lash, she thought, moved her to a hard wooden chair, so she could sit. Focusing on the faint picture of the man, in her head. Then moving outward, once she found the guy. He was on the west coast, in Oregon, she thought. Then she knew it, finding first his address, complete with apartment number, and then his personal cell phone number. It took time, even with her trying very hard.
She dialed that, the dark-skinned younger man answering almost immediately.
“Hey, what up?”
“Fade? You don’t know me. I need a plane over international waters stopped. There’s a murderer on board. She’s killed at least two people and is fleeing. We can teleport you to near the location and might have some backup for you. Other fast flyers. Are you in?”
“Um, who is this?”
She blinked, still in a trance. Noticing the blur of possibilities. Choosing the one that would have the man helping her, as closely as she could.
“This is Damsel. A woman named Sendra tortured and killed two people. Her father owns his own island, which is really a small country, so if we let her get there, we probably can’t handle this legally. The two people were brought back to life, which will make it a gray area in the courts. We can’t prove that anything fatal happened, having living people. Though, we can get her on torture, which is pretty bad.”
She felt like she was rambling, but the man on the phone did something. It made a loud, booming, click. A bit like a gun shot, from a high caliber weapon.
“Where do I need to be for this? I won’t let a killer go. I need to know more about this, but...”
Hannah didn’t really know, so spoke to the room.
Reese, the kid, still covered with his own blood, drying now, held up a hand.
“This guy is fast? Pick a landmark near him, that, um, Wisp, will know? You can do a pickup from there?”
Wisp looked at Hannah then.
“Where?”
They had to talk for a bit, but agreed on the Golden Gate Bridge. In California. Fade, apparently, was fast enough to get there in about three minutes. That would have made flying after the plane very doable, except that there was no way for the man to find it, in the air like that. Not for certain.
That part was up to her.
More accurately, it would be up to Alistair.
After that, everything was taken care of by other people. Hannah was suddenly just sitting there, not doing much of anything at all. Rather than sulk, knowing that her utility wasn’t going to be that great for a while, she went and gave people hugs. Reese was clearly feeling gross, and possibly a bit scared of being near a woman, after his ordeal. Megan was less impacted that way, for some reason. Then, she was cuddling with her husband, which was going to be comforting to her.
Still, the operation went forward without her, meaning she was the one who thought to get pictures of the blood covered former dead people, using her phone for that as well as a real camera that Debbie ran to get.
That was what they were doing, when a loud booming started, coming from the front of the house they were in. She moved toward it, climbing the stairs, rather rapidly, with Lash and Superion X right behind her. Reese as well, for some reason. It probably meant the boy wasn’t a coward or so frightened that he was going to let himself freeze when danger came.
“Hello! It is Cry Diamond and Diaspora! Hello!” It was Veronica’s voice, so Lash opened the door.
The woman was covered with liquid diamond, all in black. The other woman, standing directly next to her, really did look like they might be of a type. They were both really good looking, had curly black hair and a handful of powers.
Diaspora looked ready to kill someone.
Cry probably did too, but it was too hard to tell exactly what expression she was making, covered with armor as she was.
Veronica moved into the room then, and didn’t hug anyone.
“We need to book transport to the Island. I don’t know if we can take the whole thing, by ourselves. Father has a lot of incredibly powerful minions. I can’t believe Sendra would do such a thing!”
She looked past all of them, at the blood covered Reese.
“You survived? You have powers then? Sendra isn’t kind, but she is good with knives...”
The boy shook his head, seeming a bit baffled.
“No, I died. My mom, too. These people saved us. Somehow. From death, which... Yeah. I have no way to process that.”
Hannah didn’t either, so made something up.
“Think of it like advanced medical intervention. With a nifty near death experience. That sounds cool. You should go and write that down. As for the rest, we have a plan.” The two women, both fuming, came in then, with Veronica turning back into herself, meaning she needed clothing. Which she had, out in her car. They moved back to the basement then, as Hannah ran through things.
Seeming almost angry, possibly with her, Diaspora clenched her jaw, as they sat at the worktable, down below.
“That bitch can’t be allowed to do this. We’re only allowed to be here on the sufferance of the United States government. One of the rules is that we don’t allow harm to come to the people here. They could have us all removed, over something like this. I... She almost had to be under orders. She was the one that didn’t fit. Always. She’s brilliant, but wrong. Evil. Perfect for Father, of course. Tractable in bed and willing to do things to the rest of us. Bad things... She always has been. Ever since she was changed as a child. Not as strong or fast as most of the rest of us. Made to be Father’s little helper. A true genius, with a psychopathic mindset that can’t be tamed. When we escaped, she came along. It was her who got the government here to give us asylum in the first place...”
Everyone else was nodding along, though Hannah shrugged.
“I’m pretty sure that no-one will get rid of Diaspora over this. You’re famous, after all. That wouldn’t play well, in the press.”
Veronica snorted.
“Perhaps, but there are six of us here. No-one will care if Cry Diamond is kicked out of their country, will they? The others even less so, keeping low profiles like they do. It might just help if a certain famous sister of mine would refrain from killing and maiming people?” The woman sucked air in then and looked around. Seeming honestly worried.
Diaspora seemed ready to throw down with Veronica, then and there. Until Debbie waved her right hand.
“This won’t be a problem. It’s the same reason why we can’t just take this to court, really. The government can’t admit that this happened, or that people were brought back to life. It was an emergency, and a team effort, but if it got out that this could work once, everyone would want to try it. Which... That could be fair, but I can’t take millions of people to the Never. Damsel can’t spend her life bringing people back, either. A few, on occasion, but...” She winced then, as if it were an argument she’d had with people before.
It made some sense to Hannah, at least.
“Tearing a rip in space and time isn’t a low energy thing, is it? I can’t do it. Even if I lived there, full time, we could still only get a few people over and back each day. Not that I’m not willing to try, but... Yeah, there will be real limits that way, I think. We need rules for that. Later? So, how does this link to that werewolf?”
Everyone just looked at her, so she spoke to Reese, directly.
“Oh, werewolves are real. It’s a magical curse. We managed to take that off of a woman, who had gotten stuck in her second shape. Drugs were involved, so, you know, stay clean? Doctor Sendra was planning to kill it, last night. Your dad stopped her.” She thought it was the night before. It felt like it had been a long time, really.
The kid, his blond hair tossed and in disarray, as well as matted by blood, blinked and then nodded.
“Oh? Got it. Is that linked?”
No-one knew, but Diaspora stewed in her own juices, for a bit.
“I hate to do it, but I think we need to have a conversation with Father. That will give him a chance to put the defenses up, if we have to go in. That isn’t the most tactically sound plan, given that.”
They all agreed on that one, so decided to wait, to see if the others, the fast flyers, were going to be able to do anything. If they would, at all. Fade was in, but technically speaking, the others were all super villains. They might not be in on the idea of helping Superion X, or his family.
Nate wasn’t really a bad guy, but Solar Storm had a rather evil reputation as a killer. He didn’t want to do that kind of thing now, so he could beg off. Hannah had no idea what Solair would do. She was her mom, but they weren’t close. Not at all.
The trick there was that she was a freedom fighter. Supposedly. What they were doing might not count as freedom, in her world view. Hannah barely knew what that was, at all. Something kind of Marxist in nature. She thought. The two conversations they’d had in the last months, lasting minutes each time, hadn’t covered that kind of thing at all.
