Powerless (The Girl in the Box Book 40), page 17
“I killed your friends,” I said, catching the glint of a security camera built into the hotel portico. Damn. If I was going to do this right, I really needed Oberheuser to start shit with me. Sure, the FBI was after him – for questioning, officially, no charges filed – but if I threw down with him here in the middle of Eden Prairie, the local PD would definitely bag me for the bad guy, especially since I didn't have that sweet federal sanction behind me to detain him. “How do you feel about that?”
Oberheuser looked me dead in the eye with his cold blue ones. “I hold a grudge,” he said, heavy on the German accent.
“Well, what are you going to do about it, then?” I asked, shuffling a little closer. Two yards distance.
Oberheuser was silent save for the steady intake of breath. Honestly, he was more composed than any villain I could recall seeing, especially when I started closing in on them. He made no offensive move. At all.
“Pussy,” I said, trying to prompt a reaction. What? Men reacted to that. Hell, their lives generally revolved around reacting to it in one way or another.
Oberheuser did not react, though, save for a single raised eyebrow.
“Huh,” I said, slackening up my stance a little. I was still ready for him to do something, just surprised. “Usually I can get someone to throw down with me a lot easier than this. You must have really thick skin. Or no dangling insecurities about that skinhead look you're sporting.” He still looked at me with dull eyes, so I made it obvious what I was aiming at. “You Nazi.”
To this, he twisted his lips. “Ours was not an ideology of superiority over religion, or of national triumph.”
“Oh, but it was,” I said, smirking. “Yours was an ideology of genetic purity and superiority. Metas had the right to rule. You literally genocided weaker metas–”
“We wiped out stronger metas as well,” Oberheuser said, completely unruffled. “Ours was the will to power.”
“Oh, right,” I said, snapping my fingers. “Der Wille zur Macht.” I made a show of posing like the thinking statue. “Why does that phrase sound familiar?”
I caught a flash in Oberheuser's eyes. “That was not what it was about at all.”
“If it walks like a Nazi and wipes out entire tracts of people like a Nazi...” I shrugged.
A shadow darkened Oberheuser's features. “You are a creature of scorn. You attack with words and fists that of which you do not understand.”
“I think you just described the entire history and state of humanity,” I said, easing just a little closer. I will say, though, that it was very reaffirming to know that I still had it when it came to getting people’s goats. I was a regular goat thief. I would have been hanged in Afghanistan. Or probably celebrated as a legendary matchmaker among the men of Scotland, with my many, many stolen goats.
Yeah, I'm still bitter. Screw Scotland.
Oberheuser stuck out his chin, as if inviting me to strike first. “Does it ever hurt your heart that you failed so thoroughly in fighting your war?”
“Failed?” I scoffed. “I killed your buddies. If that's failure, what the hell does success look like?”
“Your friends not dying, too,” Oberheuser said, and there was a glint of steely triumph in his eye as the goat I'd got was got back – with a vengeance.
“You son of a bitch,” I whispered. It felt like someone had punched me squarely in the gut. Visions of the fallen bobbed in the ether beyond my sight – Zack, Breandan, my mother–
I swung on Oberheuser like a world champion boxer throwing a punch at the enemy in front of them. His chin was right there, and I put everything I had into it – ice, force, even a thought of Wolfe to heal the knuckles once contact was made and the skin's inevitable split at the point of impact.
My fist connected with his chin and made a wet thump. A sharp shock of pain exploded in my knuckles – standard fare for throwing a punch that connected bone on bone. Most of the time I ignored it – or healed through it – or chose a fleshier target.
This time, though? It wasn't so easy to ignore. It was sharp, and there was a crack, and Oberheuser took a single, staggering step back–
And the son of a bitch laughed.
I whipped my hand in front of me, waiting for the pain to die down. I hadn't hit him very hard at all; my punch should have knocked him off his feet. I looked at his chin, the point of impact; there should have been ice there from–
Brianna? I asked into my head.
Silence.
Uh...Brianna? Now is not the time to embrace resentment.
Nothing.
Blood dripped from my knuckle down the back of my hand, and I channeled thoughts of Wolfe, waiting for the opening to seal so I could throw another punch, this one with a little something extra, a little Gavrikov-enabled hypersonic flight speed behind it, but–
The blood kept flowing. A slow trickle to be sure, but...
The wound wasn't healing.
I looked up and found Oberheuser leering at me in triumph, and a sick feeling rushed into my stomach.
Gavrikov.
No fire. My feet stayed on the ground.
Kappler.
No light. No webbing.
Bjorn?
My mind was blank and Oberheuser registered no pain.
...Bastian?
My flesh stayed intact. I did not become a dragon. My stomach didn't even rumble to simulate the first stage of the transformation.
The panic running over me started to deaden in the pain in my knuckle. I reached out – so slow, like I'd been drained of my vitality – and clapped my hand on Oberheuser's wrist.
He let me, smiling wider in childlike delight, awaiting my reaction.
“You son of a bitch,” I whispered, hanging on him, the burning that should have been there not coming, not coming at all, even ten seconds in, and twenty seconds in.
He didn't even bother to try and escape my grasp. He let me hold on for another ten, just leering, and then he laughed and shook off my grip as easily as a grown-up throwing off the grip of a toddler.
“Do you see it, now?” Oberheuser asked.
“I see why you didn't die with your friends,” I said. Olivia was easing up behind me, something in her hand. She raised it at him, concentrating, then her eyes widened as she discovered the same thing I had–
No powers worked in proximity to Oberheuser.
He was a human dead zone for metahuman abilities.
And he laughed, long, rich, and deep, at us – at me – so foolish.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
For not the first time in the last few days – or my life, for that matter, I found myself without my powers, and facing an untenable situation.
Otto Klaus Oberheuser leered at me with icy blue eyes that verged on glowing, just this side of otherworldly. We stood beneath a hotel portico in the warm, humid summer air, and he laughed, knowing I'd just tried every ability I had and none of them – not ice, not fire, not flight – not that he knew about those – not my super strength – none of them worked.
And the bastard laughed. Long and loud, as though he'd just seen the funniest meme ever posted to Socialite.
I looked back at Olivia. Saw the worry flash in her eyes. She looked at me, I looked back at her. We didn't know each other that well, but a plan formed between us instantly.
Run.
I bolted for my door, she went for hers. Aniya, to her credit, ever one to read the direction the wind was blowing, had already made for her door and was closing it just as I was heaving mine open. If I'd had my powers, it would have been ripped off by my strength. But even here, ten yards away from Oberheuser – no, five, he was following us, though slowly – my powers were nulled, gone as surely as if the cops had shown up and darted me.
Olivia started the car before she even slammed her door, and it was in gear and going a second later, tires leaving plenty of rubber on the pavement as we blew out from under that hotel portico and into the street, nearly sideswiping a Mercedes in the process. She ignored the red light at the next corner and turned right, prompting a cavalcade of honks as she sped toward the freeway entrance a mile or so ahead.
“What the hell was that?” Olivia asked when we'd left Oberheuser in the dust.
I'd watched him as we pulled away. He'd made no move to chase us, just stood there and smiled, arms folded once more.
Because obviously...he'd won this round. Just like he'd won the last.
“I've never seen that kind of meta before,” I said, breathless from my run. I opened my hand, and a little ice power glowed within it. “He's got some sort of proximal power drain.”
“I couldn't launch anything,” Olivia said, hunched over the wheel, pedal to metal. “I tried to take him out, you know?” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a pen. “I was going to bury this in him, distract him for you, but...” She shook as she drove. “That's two metas in the last day that could nullify my power. I haven't had to deal with any of those since...”
Her voice trailed off, but I knew what she meant. Since Tracy was what she meant. Since Reed had fired her abuser. Former abuser. Whatever.
“I didn't try and change shape,” Traverton said from the back seat. “I wonder if it would have worked.” He sounded as detached as if he were providing commentary on a football game. One he hadn't placed a bet on and didn't care about in any way.
I glanced at Aniya. “I suppose you don't have any insight on this?”
Aniya shrugged. “I do not know my power, save for my strength. It did curiously fade when I drew close to him. I noticed it when opening the door.”
“I like that your self-preservation instincts are so well-honed that you knew to get in the car before we'd even started running for it,” I said.
She shrugged once more. “It was not hard to gauge the direction of your planning. When presented with the option of fight or run, and you clearly could not fight.”
I hated her conclusion, logical as it was. “Whatever,” I said, doing my own mental shrug. “Let's just head for Wisconsin. Forty minutes and we'll be clear of these clowns, and that'll give us some distance to–”
“How do you think he found us?” Olivia asked, voice rattling.
“Probably followed us from the office,” I said. “Not like it was a far jaunt.” Our office was two streets away from the hotel Aniya had picked. Maybe a five-minute walk, if that.
Olivia nodded, eyes flitting around the road as she drove. She took the entry ramp onto I-494 east at almost twice the recommended speed, leaving her inclination toward grandma driving behind in her mad rush to get clear of Oberheuser. I couldn't blame her. My stomach was still churning, and I kept checking the rearview mirrors, expecting to see that leering face and those blue eyes staring back at me.
“How long until we get there?” Traverton asked, at his usual pitch, which was about an octave off a full-on whine.
I started to prepare the stereotypical parental response, but something caught my eye. Just outside my door there was a flash – just for a second – then it was gone. Staring, I wondered what I'd seen. There was a minivan beside us, but the occupants appeared to be a normal family, with swarthy brown skin. The man was driving, and had a thin goatee. The other occupants of the car were shadowed, but I could see a thin, long-haired woman next to him and a couple kids – barely visible – through the rear windows.
“Huh,” I said. No apparent threat there. They weren't even paying attention to us.
“What?” Olivia had picked up on my malaise. “What now?”
“Nothing,” I said, trying to defuse her more than because I believed it was actually nothing. The freeway was full of cars; it wasn't rush hour, still, but it was certainly crowded enough to resemble rush hour. “Just...thought I saw someth–”
Another flash zipped by her window, and I cringed.
Olivia snapped around, looking behind her. “What was that?” she asked, sitting up so straight in her seat I almost feared she'd pop her head out the top of the car like a giraffe.
“Your friend from the bank is back,” Aniya said calmly. Way too calmly. I looked back at her and found her buckled in, hands folded in her lap, like nothing was happening, no big deal.
She was right, though. I'd come to the same conclusion. The flash I'd seen outside the window to my right was the speedster running past...
...And the one beside Olivia's door was him running back...after...
I looked out the front windshield, and my suspicion was answered.
Traffic had halted. A few cars up, a Ford truck veered to the right, jackknifing and crashed into the vehicle in the next lane. A chain reaction followed; brake lights glowed red all around us, and Olivia squealed the brakes bringing the Chevy to a halt. “What is it?” she asked desperately.
“The speedster,” I said, “Squirrel. He ran by and–”
But the question was answered by circumstance before I could do so with words, for striding down the road in front of us, knocking aside every car as he passed, was Squirrel's delivery, dropped off in front of us, to block the way, smashing his way back to us–
Was Moose.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
“Everybody out of the car!” I shouted as Moose charged. He didn't take it slow, either, he chewed up the distance between us at a sprint, using every bit of meta-enhanced muscle his wide thighs packed to run us down. He tucked his shoulder low when he got close and slammed into the hood of the Chevy as I threw myself out–
I smashed into the minivan next to us in this freeway-turned-parking lot, bouncing off as Olivia's car took flight. Aniya slammed into it next to me, rattling it and causing the family within to scream. “Oh, shit,” I muttered, and leapt after the Chevy, throwing a little Gavrikov flight into assisting my takeoff.
With a sharp look behind me, I saw Olivia flying in a slow arc over the far edge of the freeway, dipping out of sight below the car. Great. She'd ejected so hard she'd effectively removed herself from the field of battle. I was sure she'd get turned around and return – probably – but her maneuver had cost precious seconds in which I was going to have to face Moose more or less alone. Or with Aniya and Traverton for backup, which was the same thing.
I leapt and caught the Chevy before it came crashing down on the vehicle behind, which was a silver sedan. A pale-skinned Minnesotan with wide eyes looked out at me through the windshield. Which was all I saw before I rode the car back down onto Moose–
The damned mobster caught the vehicle, me riding the top, and I tried to push it down on him, crush him beneath.
No dice. All momentum stopped, the Chevy caught at a 45-degree angle, the big man beneath it like a wedge, keeping it from touching the ground.
“Crap,” I said, flopped atop the vehicle like a surfboard. I caught a flash of Aniya beating feet down the channel between cars, running at top speed to get clear of this impromptu battlefield. She hurdled the divider at the side of the highway and then vaulted a ten-foot chainlink fence, proving to my satisfaction that yes, she was indeed a meta. And safely out of the field of battle.
One less thing to worry about. Which was fortunate, because I was about to have something else much worse to concern myself with.
Moose lifted the car, pressing it over his head, me still on top. I debated letting out a little scream to play up the theatrical element of my predicament, but decided against it. If anyone was recording this, I'd be embarrassed later by having that on film.
With a grunt I could almost feel through the car's frame, Moose hurled it – and me – through the air toward the green, overhanging highway sign about thirty yards behind where I'd started.
This was a hell of a thing. Traffic was stacked up as far back as the eye could see, 494 having officially come to a standstill in the middle of the damned day thanks to this incident. The Chevy was on course to come down hard in the middle of the jam, and would probably turn some people – present company included – into jam as well, if it followed its current course.
If only there was a hero here to save us...
Oh, right.
Using my flight powers, I put a little spin on the Chevy, letting it flip toward a rooftop landing. Letting my legs flop loose, I kept my grip on the vehicle. I also elongated the arc so that we started to come down in the five-foot gap between a Toyota Camry and the Honda Odyssey in front of it.
My feet touched the ground and suddenly the full weight of the car was on my back, mashing my neck down, down almost parallel to my shoulders. My spine popped a little, and I heaved, lifting it up so it didn't break my spine.
“No big deal,” I said, lifting the car overhead. “Just a little military press. Two thousand pounds.” I slanted it so as not to damage the cars on either side of me. “And...” I looked sideways; only a lane over was the shoulder of the freeway, and a nice patch of grass before the chain-link fence that separated 494 from the surface road over there.
I hurled the car over the traffic jam and it crashed and flipped into the fence, coming to rest upside down, grill buried in the drainage ditch, the top leaning hard against the chain-link with a whine of stressed metal. I felt a little bad about destroying Olivia's car, but not as bad I would have if it had been chucked into some family's vehicle, killing people.
The most immediate threat taken care of, I turned my attention back to Moose, who was watching me from about thirty yards away. For the first time, I noticed he had a double chin. It was especially pronounced because his head was down, his eyes watching my movements.
“What were you expecting?” I asked. “Me to get squashed by that?”
He shrugged his flabby shoulders broadly. “You just don't give up, do you?”
“If you knew me, you'd know the answer to that question.” I set my feet, readying myself for the inevitable ambush. Someone was honking madly in the distance, probably impatient that their day had ground to a halt for unknown reasons.
“I don't know you,” he said, taking a few steps forward and then slowly breaking into a run. He was skirting the gap between cars, preparing his charge. If he built momentum, getting him to stop would be nigh impossible.
