Not (That) Distressed
This is vaguely related to Someday--or at least, Jake makes an appearance, and Katie is mentioned--but set much later down the timeline. Liza is a shameless Mary-Sue, and though I don't find her annoying, I don't find me annoying either, so warnings for that. Superhero names are really hard to come up with, especially when you think Adjective Person is the stupidest naming convention ever. This was originally supposed to lean a little more heavily on Egyptian mythos, so there's some leftovers of that, and it was supposed to be longer with slightly more plot, but well. Things change when the opening page sits on your hard drive for more than a year before you write the end.
I think that's all the necessary notes, so without further ado (and that really was too much ado, wasn't it?),
Not That Distressed
Liza sighed, skimming the letter from her editor. Of course, she thought sardonically, her book had been rejected. It was a science fiction novel about the defeat of an evil tyrant; there was no way the censors would let that through. But she had always written science fiction, her second book published just before the takeover. She continued to write the same despite the fact that it never got published because her editor continued to ‘lose’ her manuscripts and they still got out.
The Principality may have been watching her, but they were not watching her editor. She stretched absently, tossing the letter to her table, scowling for the benefit of the cameras in her apartment and making tea. It was not like she needed the money; her parents had left her a sizable inheritance, and Kyle had been well off himself when they had moved in together.
Liza bowed her head, thinking of the last time she had seen him. He was one of the few Costumes who had never bothered with a secret identity, and the morning of the takeover, he had smiled sadly at her, kissed her desperately, and walked out the door to join the union of Costumes fighting against who had then been Sutekh, but they now called Prince Set. He had not returned; none of them had, though the people were split pretty much half-and-half on whether they thought the Costumes were dead or just in hiding.
Kyle was why they watched her. But she had been Kyle Maddow’s ditzy girlfriend in the media, and in their cameras and under the eyes of their spies she was a bad scifi writer. They never dreamed that encoded in her manuscripts were seditious words, never dreamed that in her daily walks and long stops in cafes there were messages to the Resistance. They had no idea how close they were to defeat at the hands of the Resistance.
The Resistance was only waiting for word from one more spy. As there had been no public executions lately, they expected her back in a week or so-though if she had been killed instead of captured it would probably take another week beyond that for them to learn of it. Liza hoped the girl was okay; not only did she have the last bit of information they needed, she was also the most likely to have figured out what the Principality knew about the Costumes’ fates.
Liza curled up in a chair with her tea, staring blankly at the tv and seeing nothing except the maps and plans in her mind. When the time came, she would lead the strike on the Principality’s main complex, leaving the corporate headquarters and PR division to Troy Johnson, the leader of their movement. His sister Kate would handle the news. In her mind, Liza traced the route through the compound, remembering where teams would branch out to the various R and D divisions, the labs, and the containment facility. The only thing she did not know was how deep the prison went. It was that piece of information that they were waiting for, because it was key to how many teams Liza would need to take the compound.
On the news, they announced another execution.
Liza managed not to jerk, but quickly turned her attention to the report. The reporter rambled on about terrorism and sedition and the usual Principality lies about safety and freedom-as if it were possible to have both from a government-but in the background a young woman mounted the stage to face the firing squad.
Poor Sal, Liza thought, swallowing the lump. The girl had known the risk, of course, but that did not mean that losing another of their people did not hurt. Liza had never met her personally, but in a group as insular as the Resistance, there was no way not to know that she had a husband, two dogs they loved more than children, and a brother who was missing just like Kyle.
On the stage, she shouted “Six!” and then the gunshots came.
Liza closed her eyes. Sal had found a way to tell them what they needed to know, but there was no way to know if she had had word on the Costumes. Maybe they would never know what had happened to them. Maybe, once the Principality was gone, they could find out.
“You heard, I guess?” Troy asked. “About Kate?” That was a code. Troy never called his sister Kate; she was always Katie. It meant he actually meant Sal.
“Yeah, of course,” Liza answered. There was no need to specify what she had heard, since the phone was tapped, and there was no quick and easy lie about Kate that would apply to Sal too.
“Good. You’re going to come, right?”
Liza grinned. A meeting, excellent. “Sure. Hadn’t heard when yet.” The where was easy, but the when was harder.
“Tomorrow,” Troy said. “Swing by around six.”
“Of course I’ll be there,” she promised. “You know I wouldn’t miss it.”
Troy laughed over the line. “Not you. I’d never have imagined Katie would hit it off so easily with someone like you.”
Liza smiled; Katie was a sweet girl, and they had a lot in common. Fiercely missing their loved ones was a bond Troy could never get, though he cared about them both. Troy had been a friend since college-they had both been English majors in a primarily science and math dominated school. He had been the one to introduce her to Kyle, years ago, when he had finally come around about Katie getting back with Jake-the GreyFox-and started to get to know Jake, and, by proxy, the other Costumes.
“Till then,” Troy said.
“See you,” Liza agreed, then set her cell down to email her contacts about the meeting. That done, she opened her latest manuscript and did her best to start writing, trying to get lost in the world she had created. Never had she wanted time to pass more than she did today, and writing was the best escape she knew. But not even spaceships and aliens could hold her attention when change was so close to hand. She saved the document and stood, crossing to her bookshelf.
Liza pulled down an album and curled up on the couch with it. She thumbed through years of laughter and joy, running her fingers across photographs of herself and Troy at school, dinners with Troy, Katie, and Jake, parties with her friends and Kyle, the day she and Kyle had moved in together; memories of happier times. She paused, helplessly, at the page of her fifth anniversary with Kyle, looking at the photo of them dancing. She had been laughing too hard to stay up and he was holding her, one arm on her back and one around her waist, chuckling into her hair. She traced his face; sixteen months since the photo had been taken. A year since she had seen him. Was he even alive?
Tears stung at her eyes and she pushed them away, surprised. She had not cried over this, not since that first night, when she had curled into their bed and found his scent strong on the pillows. The next morning she had put his things in storage, put their house up for rent, and moved into an apartment by herself. She had been level and practical for a year, joining the Resistance and continuing to write. And suddenly, so close to victory, her emotions were spilling out. Calling Troy would be silly-and dangerous, since he had just called and a return call would be suspicious-and girly. She did not have time to be girly.
Resolutely, Liza closed the album and put it away, returning to her computer. There was nothing else to do but write; and if everything she wrote today needed to be rewritten, her editor would forgive her the lapse.
The meeting with Troy and the Resistance had been short, only to set a time and hash out the very final details of the plan. Now, two days later Liza and her team leads were having lunch in a cafe, eyes on the clock. One by one the leads trickled out to join their teams and get in place, and when the clock ticked over the five till one, Liza was finally alone.
She ate the rest of her sandwich slowly, drank the rest of her water, and stood, leaving a bill on the table to cover her tab.
At one on the dot, she crossed the street to the metal gate of Ta-sekhet-ma'at, the Principality’s main complex, and entered a code into the panel by the gate.
It slid open soundlessly.
Allowing herself one last moment for fear as the gate clicked into the wall, Liza took a deep breath and strode in, pushing the fear away. She could hear her team leads hissing orders as the men and women of the Resistance streamed into the complex behind her.
The first set of guards shouted as she came through the long tunnel.
Liza stunned one of them. A second stunshot arced past her shoulder to take down the second guard before she could aim for the second. “Thanks,” she called. She gave the signal for the teams to start breaking off.
“We’re with you,” Lee Hunter said, his team falling into formation behind her. Lee fell in at Liza’s elbow, flanking her one step behind and half a step the right. He was one of the Resistance’s best fighters, but his team was a ragtag group, handpicked to be the most unpredictable.
Liza nodded and headed straight for the stairs. The lift was a no go; one of the teams was responsible for taking down the power, and there was no telling when they would manage. She took point down the stairs, though Lee shot another guard over her shoulder.
They did not speak as the bypassed each floor, knowing the other teams were infiltrating them one by one.
Alarms started blaring, warning klaxons and flashing lights making the stairwell turn alternately blood-red and a disconcerting orange.
Noise behind them, and Lee barked an order to his team. Several in the back turned to be rearguards.
Liza kept on going.
“This is six,” Lee said, confused.
Liza stared down the extra flight of stairs. “Well, we’re to start at the bottom.”
Lee nodded and they bounded down the extra flight of stairs.
“What the fuck?” Lee whispered.
The mysterious bottom floor was undeniably a laboratory, but it was set up like no lab Liza could even imagine. In the back of her mind she had a feeling it would be making a reappearance in another book, years down the line, because it was truly some mad scientist’s lair. The restraints on the tables alone would give her nightmares.
There was no one there.
“Cells?” Liza asked, pointing. The far wall was lined with doors, all with keypads beside them. There were observation plates on each door.
Lee nodded. He went left while she went right, the rest of his team fanning out to start checking the equipment.
Liza peered into the observation plate and swore.
“What?” Lee asked, a step away from his first cell.
Liza slammed a hand down on the open key.
The door ground slowly open.
Wary green eyes regarded her a moment, then widened. Jake grinned. “Hi, Liza.”
“Oh my God,” Liza whispered, stepping into the cell to hug him. “Jake.”
Jake hugged her, squeezing tightly, obviously more relieved than his rakish grin would have suggested. “You’re here to rescue us?”
“We’re to get the prisoners out and blow this place to hell.”
“I can support that,” Jake said fervently. “Let’s do it.”
Liza moved to the next cell, trying very hard not to think. Thinking would raise her hopes and she just could not bear to have them dashed, not yet.
The other nine cells held other prominent members of the Costume community, including Machina, who had been chair of the Costumes League at the time of the takeover, and her second, Noctourne.
“Where’s Rush?” Machina asked, looking around. He was her husband, and one of the League’s more powerful Costumes.
“There’s another holding block upstairs,” Jake said quietly.
“What, why?” Noctourne asked.
“Look around,” Jake snapped. “We’re the defensive Costumes, the sidekicks, and the weakest.”
“The heavy hitters must be upstairs,” Machina realized.
Jake nodded. “They are.”
“How do you know?” Machina demanded.
Jake’s lip curled. “I managed to escape. Once.” His face clearly forbade any other questions on that front.
“We’re clear,” Lee told Liza.
Liza nodded. “Then let’s go upstairs,” she said fiercely. Kyle, if he had survived the battle that had captured the Costumes, would be there with the other powerhouses of the League.
Jake led the way, winning the argument with an easy, “They can’t hurt me.”
Liza and Machina followed hard on his heels.
The building shook under the force of an explosion. Noctourne caught Liza from behind and Jake complained, “Man, I wanted to help!”
“They won’t blow the main building till we’ve reported in,” Lee assured him.
Jake grinned and led the way unerringly through the winding maze of hallways.
Shooting ahead alerted them to the fact that the other teams had reached this level.
Jake yelped as a laser blast knocked him down as he rounded a corner.
Machina shifted, metal covering her skin in tiny, scale-like plates. She caught him, propping him up out of the way, lasers splashing harmlessly off of her. Then she strode down the hallway to the shooters, disarming them.
Liza followed as soon as it was safe. She, Lee, and his team joined the fire-fight happening through the big lab at the end of the hall. Another team was firing from the other doorway, leaving the Principality guards pinned behind some equipment on the far side of the room.
Machina and Noctourne casually walked through the rippling laserfire and stunshots to simply upend the machine between them. Machina stunned one guard and the stunshots took the rest.
“This floor clear?” Liza asked the other teams.
Another of the team leads, Gerson Macias, nodded in reply.
Jake, feet back under him, was opening the cells one by one. The freed Costumes were hugging each other and assembling in their familiar order.
“Who’re we missing?” Machina asked, looking around.
“Rush,” Jake said, eyes skimming over the group. “Kyle, and-”
“Scarlette,” Noctourne added.
“And Dagr,” Jake finished.
Four missing, Liza thought, frowning. “Any sign of them?” she asked her men.
Gerson shook his head. “We haven’t found anybody except the few political prisoners we expected. No sign of any Costumes.”
“Damnit,” Machina said vehemently.
Liza privately agreed, but shook her head. “Okay, then let’s get out of here.”
“And blow this place to hell!” Jake added.
Liza nodded. “The unconscious guards, bring them,” she ordered. Her men and the Costumes obeyed, gathering the downed men and slinging them over their shoulders. The stairs were going to suck, Liza thought, but seeing this place go up would be worth it.
Outside, Jake squeezed her shoulder. “They weren’t in there,” he said roughly. “They’ve got to be somewhere. We’ll find them.”
Machina, beside them, nodded gratefully at him. Liza could not let herself think of it.
“Call from Troy,” Lee said, jogging over. “If we’re done here, they need some reinforcements over at Corporate.”
“Troy?” Jake said, sounding delighted. “He’s in on this?”
“He’s in charge of this,” Lee said, looking at Jake, confused.
Jake laughed. “Well then. If he needs reinforcements, let’s give him reinforcements.”
Liza nodded. “Leave Gerson in charge of taking this place down,” she ordered and let Lee lead the way to a commandeered transport. She jumped in the back with the Costumes and Lee’s team. Lee drove.
The Costumes were scrambling before Lee had even brought the transport to a halt, and Liza rolled out of the back hard on their heels. The team followed more carefully, since there was a fire-fight going on on the steps of the Djeser-Djeseru Building.
Even as the Costumes and Lee’s team stunned the last of the guards, the glass front of the building shattered outward in a burst of glass and light. Jake hit Liza in a flying tackle, rolling them both out of the way of the raining rubble and taking the worst of the glass. He was on his feet again as soon as he was sure she was all right, sprinting to cover two of Lee’s men, held down under the rapidly disintegrating cover of a car.
Prince Set, looking more like the villain Sutekh and less like the groomed politician he had become in the last year, stood on the top of the steps, his lightning powers battering down everything the Costumes and Resistance were using for cover.
Liza looked around. Machina was letting Lee and a few of his men use her as cover and Noctourne was focused very hard on bending the waves of lightning around him and the Resistance members he was sheltering. Jake was down, but he had grounded himself on the nearby light post, and Sutekh’s lightning continued to strike him rather than the men he had gone to protect.
Heavy in Liza’s pocket was a power-dampener. The Resistance had two of them-Troy had the other, since they had not known where Set would be during the assault-and had lost six spies in the effort to get them. The hard part was going to be getting close enough to use it.
Liza circled around, trying to stay low and out of sight.
Sutekh was focused on Machina, now. She had risen and was striding toward him, making slow ground against the force of his powers. The dust storm he had called up was making it hard for her to advance, but she planted her feet and would not be pushed back.
A rush of wind blew everyone’s clothes for a moment, and then Rush materialized at Machina’s side. He had, Liza realized, given the Costumes that had them back their equipment. Rush pressed a hurried kiss to Machina’s metal cheek and then was gone again in a gust of displaced air.
Sutekh snarled, easily batting away a bolt Noctourne had reflected back at him.
A brilliantly purple burst of light and heat erupted in Sutekh’s face. Sutekh lashed out with lightening from both hands in the direction the light had come from.
In the moment when he took a breath and prepared to strike again, Liza hit him in a full body tackle, shoulder taking him in the middle of his back. One hand caught a hold in his cape. The other snapped the power dampener around his neck.
Sutekh’s bellow of rage was cut short as they crashed to the ground, almost eight feet below. Liza had tackled him off the steps. She rolled off of him-not a comfortable landing, but it had saved her broken bones-and levelled her stunner at his chest.
Sutekh lay still in a heap at the foot of the steps.
Liza took a deep breath and looked up at the hero Sutekh’s last blast had been aimed at. She met violet eyes and swallowed tightly.
“Hey,” Kyle said, smiling slightly.
“Hey,” Liza answered roughly. There were new lines around his eyes and new scars she could see on his arms, but he was whole and his eyes were alert. She swallowed again and made herself look away from the over-bright purple eyes. “Lee,” she called. “Send someone to find Troy. Tell him we’ve got Set and the Costumes are with us.”
In the corner of her eye, Liza could see Rush and Machina-skin instead of metal again-hugging fiercely. Dagr and Scarlette were shaking hands and hugging the other Costumes. Jake had crossed the street to where Katie stood on the far corner with several news crews and he had an arm slung around her shoulders.
“On it,” Lee called, tossing a sketchy salute.
Noctourne touched her shoulder. “I can take that off your hands,” he said, low voice rumbling musically.
“Thanks,” she said, handing him the stunner and stepping away from the unconscious Sutekh. Duty done, she turned back towards Kyle.
He was in tattered jeans and what looked like a scrub shirt, suspiciously stained in a few places the scifi writer in her easily identified as the marks of testing and torture. His feet were bare, though he did not seem to notice the glass littering the street. He had lost weight, but there was an affectionate smile pulling at the edges of his mouth. “Kyle,” she whispered, stepping into his personal space.
Kyle leaned willingly into her arms, burying his face in her hair and clutching her to him tightly.
Liza closed her eyes for a long moment, face in his neck.
“God,” he murmured roughly. “I missed you.” Suddenly he laughed, pulling back to kiss her warmly. When they broke, he murmured into her shoulder, “Next time there’s a supervillain trying to take over the city, I’m leaving him to you.”
Face buried in the centre of his chest, Liza laughed until she cried, clinging to his arms.
I think that's all the necessary notes, so without further ado (and that really was too much ado, wasn't it?),
Not That Distressed
Liza sighed, skimming the letter from her editor. Of course, she thought sardonically, her book had been rejected. It was a science fiction novel about the defeat of an evil tyrant; there was no way the censors would let that through. But she had always written science fiction, her second book published just before the takeover. She continued to write the same despite the fact that it never got published because her editor continued to ‘lose’ her manuscripts and they still got out.
The Principality may have been watching her, but they were not watching her editor. She stretched absently, tossing the letter to her table, scowling for the benefit of the cameras in her apartment and making tea. It was not like she needed the money; her parents had left her a sizable inheritance, and Kyle had been well off himself when they had moved in together.
Liza bowed her head, thinking of the last time she had seen him. He was one of the few Costumes who had never bothered with a secret identity, and the morning of the takeover, he had smiled sadly at her, kissed her desperately, and walked out the door to join the union of Costumes fighting against who had then been Sutekh, but they now called Prince Set. He had not returned; none of them had, though the people were split pretty much half-and-half on whether they thought the Costumes were dead or just in hiding.
Kyle was why they watched her. But she had been Kyle Maddow’s ditzy girlfriend in the media, and in their cameras and under the eyes of their spies she was a bad scifi writer. They never dreamed that encoded in her manuscripts were seditious words, never dreamed that in her daily walks and long stops in cafes there were messages to the Resistance. They had no idea how close they were to defeat at the hands of the Resistance.
The Resistance was only waiting for word from one more spy. As there had been no public executions lately, they expected her back in a week or so-though if she had been killed instead of captured it would probably take another week beyond that for them to learn of it. Liza hoped the girl was okay; not only did she have the last bit of information they needed, she was also the most likely to have figured out what the Principality knew about the Costumes’ fates.
Liza curled up in a chair with her tea, staring blankly at the tv and seeing nothing except the maps and plans in her mind. When the time came, she would lead the strike on the Principality’s main complex, leaving the corporate headquarters and PR division to Troy Johnson, the leader of their movement. His sister Kate would handle the news. In her mind, Liza traced the route through the compound, remembering where teams would branch out to the various R and D divisions, the labs, and the containment facility. The only thing she did not know was how deep the prison went. It was that piece of information that they were waiting for, because it was key to how many teams Liza would need to take the compound.
On the news, they announced another execution.
Liza managed not to jerk, but quickly turned her attention to the report. The reporter rambled on about terrorism and sedition and the usual Principality lies about safety and freedom-as if it were possible to have both from a government-but in the background a young woman mounted the stage to face the firing squad.
Poor Sal, Liza thought, swallowing the lump. The girl had known the risk, of course, but that did not mean that losing another of their people did not hurt. Liza had never met her personally, but in a group as insular as the Resistance, there was no way not to know that she had a husband, two dogs they loved more than children, and a brother who was missing just like Kyle.
On the stage, she shouted “Six!” and then the gunshots came.
Liza closed her eyes. Sal had found a way to tell them what they needed to know, but there was no way to know if she had had word on the Costumes. Maybe they would never know what had happened to them. Maybe, once the Principality was gone, they could find out.
“You heard, I guess?” Troy asked. “About Kate?” That was a code. Troy never called his sister Kate; she was always Katie. It meant he actually meant Sal.
“Yeah, of course,” Liza answered. There was no need to specify what she had heard, since the phone was tapped, and there was no quick and easy lie about Kate that would apply to Sal too.
“Good. You’re going to come, right?”
Liza grinned. A meeting, excellent. “Sure. Hadn’t heard when yet.” The where was easy, but the when was harder.
“Tomorrow,” Troy said. “Swing by around six.”
“Of course I’ll be there,” she promised. “You know I wouldn’t miss it.”
Troy laughed over the line. “Not you. I’d never have imagined Katie would hit it off so easily with someone like you.”
Liza smiled; Katie was a sweet girl, and they had a lot in common. Fiercely missing their loved ones was a bond Troy could never get, though he cared about them both. Troy had been a friend since college-they had both been English majors in a primarily science and math dominated school. He had been the one to introduce her to Kyle, years ago, when he had finally come around about Katie getting back with Jake-the GreyFox-and started to get to know Jake, and, by proxy, the other Costumes.
“Till then,” Troy said.
“See you,” Liza agreed, then set her cell down to email her contacts about the meeting. That done, she opened her latest manuscript and did her best to start writing, trying to get lost in the world she had created. Never had she wanted time to pass more than she did today, and writing was the best escape she knew. But not even spaceships and aliens could hold her attention when change was so close to hand. She saved the document and stood, crossing to her bookshelf.
Liza pulled down an album and curled up on the couch with it. She thumbed through years of laughter and joy, running her fingers across photographs of herself and Troy at school, dinners with Troy, Katie, and Jake, parties with her friends and Kyle, the day she and Kyle had moved in together; memories of happier times. She paused, helplessly, at the page of her fifth anniversary with Kyle, looking at the photo of them dancing. She had been laughing too hard to stay up and he was holding her, one arm on her back and one around her waist, chuckling into her hair. She traced his face; sixteen months since the photo had been taken. A year since she had seen him. Was he even alive?
Tears stung at her eyes and she pushed them away, surprised. She had not cried over this, not since that first night, when she had curled into their bed and found his scent strong on the pillows. The next morning she had put his things in storage, put their house up for rent, and moved into an apartment by herself. She had been level and practical for a year, joining the Resistance and continuing to write. And suddenly, so close to victory, her emotions were spilling out. Calling Troy would be silly-and dangerous, since he had just called and a return call would be suspicious-and girly. She did not have time to be girly.
Resolutely, Liza closed the album and put it away, returning to her computer. There was nothing else to do but write; and if everything she wrote today needed to be rewritten, her editor would forgive her the lapse.
The meeting with Troy and the Resistance had been short, only to set a time and hash out the very final details of the plan. Now, two days later Liza and her team leads were having lunch in a cafe, eyes on the clock. One by one the leads trickled out to join their teams and get in place, and when the clock ticked over the five till one, Liza was finally alone.
She ate the rest of her sandwich slowly, drank the rest of her water, and stood, leaving a bill on the table to cover her tab.
At one on the dot, she crossed the street to the metal gate of Ta-sekhet-ma'at, the Principality’s main complex, and entered a code into the panel by the gate.
It slid open soundlessly.
Allowing herself one last moment for fear as the gate clicked into the wall, Liza took a deep breath and strode in, pushing the fear away. She could hear her team leads hissing orders as the men and women of the Resistance streamed into the complex behind her.
The first set of guards shouted as she came through the long tunnel.
Liza stunned one of them. A second stunshot arced past her shoulder to take down the second guard before she could aim for the second. “Thanks,” she called. She gave the signal for the teams to start breaking off.
“We’re with you,” Lee Hunter said, his team falling into formation behind her. Lee fell in at Liza’s elbow, flanking her one step behind and half a step the right. He was one of the Resistance’s best fighters, but his team was a ragtag group, handpicked to be the most unpredictable.
Liza nodded and headed straight for the stairs. The lift was a no go; one of the teams was responsible for taking down the power, and there was no telling when they would manage. She took point down the stairs, though Lee shot another guard over her shoulder.
They did not speak as the bypassed each floor, knowing the other teams were infiltrating them one by one.
Alarms started blaring, warning klaxons and flashing lights making the stairwell turn alternately blood-red and a disconcerting orange.
Noise behind them, and Lee barked an order to his team. Several in the back turned to be rearguards.
Liza kept on going.
“This is six,” Lee said, confused.
Liza stared down the extra flight of stairs. “Well, we’re to start at the bottom.”
Lee nodded and they bounded down the extra flight of stairs.
“What the fuck?” Lee whispered.
The mysterious bottom floor was undeniably a laboratory, but it was set up like no lab Liza could even imagine. In the back of her mind she had a feeling it would be making a reappearance in another book, years down the line, because it was truly some mad scientist’s lair. The restraints on the tables alone would give her nightmares.
There was no one there.
“Cells?” Liza asked, pointing. The far wall was lined with doors, all with keypads beside them. There were observation plates on each door.
Lee nodded. He went left while she went right, the rest of his team fanning out to start checking the equipment.
Liza peered into the observation plate and swore.
“What?” Lee asked, a step away from his first cell.
Liza slammed a hand down on the open key.
The door ground slowly open.
Wary green eyes regarded her a moment, then widened. Jake grinned. “Hi, Liza.”
“Oh my God,” Liza whispered, stepping into the cell to hug him. “Jake.”
Jake hugged her, squeezing tightly, obviously more relieved than his rakish grin would have suggested. “You’re here to rescue us?”
“We’re to get the prisoners out and blow this place to hell.”
“I can support that,” Jake said fervently. “Let’s do it.”
Liza moved to the next cell, trying very hard not to think. Thinking would raise her hopes and she just could not bear to have them dashed, not yet.
The other nine cells held other prominent members of the Costume community, including Machina, who had been chair of the Costumes League at the time of the takeover, and her second, Noctourne.
“Where’s Rush?” Machina asked, looking around. He was her husband, and one of the League’s more powerful Costumes.
“There’s another holding block upstairs,” Jake said quietly.
“What, why?” Noctourne asked.
“Look around,” Jake snapped. “We’re the defensive Costumes, the sidekicks, and the weakest.”
“The heavy hitters must be upstairs,” Machina realized.
Jake nodded. “They are.”
“How do you know?” Machina demanded.
Jake’s lip curled. “I managed to escape. Once.” His face clearly forbade any other questions on that front.
“We’re clear,” Lee told Liza.
Liza nodded. “Then let’s go upstairs,” she said fiercely. Kyle, if he had survived the battle that had captured the Costumes, would be there with the other powerhouses of the League.
Jake led the way, winning the argument with an easy, “They can’t hurt me.”
Liza and Machina followed hard on his heels.
The building shook under the force of an explosion. Noctourne caught Liza from behind and Jake complained, “Man, I wanted to help!”
“They won’t blow the main building till we’ve reported in,” Lee assured him.
Jake grinned and led the way unerringly through the winding maze of hallways.
Shooting ahead alerted them to the fact that the other teams had reached this level.
Jake yelped as a laser blast knocked him down as he rounded a corner.
Machina shifted, metal covering her skin in tiny, scale-like plates. She caught him, propping him up out of the way, lasers splashing harmlessly off of her. Then she strode down the hallway to the shooters, disarming them.
Liza followed as soon as it was safe. She, Lee, and his team joined the fire-fight happening through the big lab at the end of the hall. Another team was firing from the other doorway, leaving the Principality guards pinned behind some equipment on the far side of the room.
Machina and Noctourne casually walked through the rippling laserfire and stunshots to simply upend the machine between them. Machina stunned one guard and the stunshots took the rest.
“This floor clear?” Liza asked the other teams.
Another of the team leads, Gerson Macias, nodded in reply.
Jake, feet back under him, was opening the cells one by one. The freed Costumes were hugging each other and assembling in their familiar order.
“Who’re we missing?” Machina asked, looking around.
“Rush,” Jake said, eyes skimming over the group. “Kyle, and-”
“Scarlette,” Noctourne added.
“And Dagr,” Jake finished.
Four missing, Liza thought, frowning. “Any sign of them?” she asked her men.
Gerson shook his head. “We haven’t found anybody except the few political prisoners we expected. No sign of any Costumes.”
“Damnit,” Machina said vehemently.
Liza privately agreed, but shook her head. “Okay, then let’s get out of here.”
“And blow this place to hell!” Jake added.
Liza nodded. “The unconscious guards, bring them,” she ordered. Her men and the Costumes obeyed, gathering the downed men and slinging them over their shoulders. The stairs were going to suck, Liza thought, but seeing this place go up would be worth it.
Outside, Jake squeezed her shoulder. “They weren’t in there,” he said roughly. “They’ve got to be somewhere. We’ll find them.”
Machina, beside them, nodded gratefully at him. Liza could not let herself think of it.
“Call from Troy,” Lee said, jogging over. “If we’re done here, they need some reinforcements over at Corporate.”
“Troy?” Jake said, sounding delighted. “He’s in on this?”
“He’s in charge of this,” Lee said, looking at Jake, confused.
Jake laughed. “Well then. If he needs reinforcements, let’s give him reinforcements.”
Liza nodded. “Leave Gerson in charge of taking this place down,” she ordered and let Lee lead the way to a commandeered transport. She jumped in the back with the Costumes and Lee’s team. Lee drove.
The Costumes were scrambling before Lee had even brought the transport to a halt, and Liza rolled out of the back hard on their heels. The team followed more carefully, since there was a fire-fight going on on the steps of the Djeser-Djeseru Building.
Even as the Costumes and Lee’s team stunned the last of the guards, the glass front of the building shattered outward in a burst of glass and light. Jake hit Liza in a flying tackle, rolling them both out of the way of the raining rubble and taking the worst of the glass. He was on his feet again as soon as he was sure she was all right, sprinting to cover two of Lee’s men, held down under the rapidly disintegrating cover of a car.
Prince Set, looking more like the villain Sutekh and less like the groomed politician he had become in the last year, stood on the top of the steps, his lightning powers battering down everything the Costumes and Resistance were using for cover.
Liza looked around. Machina was letting Lee and a few of his men use her as cover and Noctourne was focused very hard on bending the waves of lightning around him and the Resistance members he was sheltering. Jake was down, but he had grounded himself on the nearby light post, and Sutekh’s lightning continued to strike him rather than the men he had gone to protect.
Heavy in Liza’s pocket was a power-dampener. The Resistance had two of them-Troy had the other, since they had not known where Set would be during the assault-and had lost six spies in the effort to get them. The hard part was going to be getting close enough to use it.
Liza circled around, trying to stay low and out of sight.
Sutekh was focused on Machina, now. She had risen and was striding toward him, making slow ground against the force of his powers. The dust storm he had called up was making it hard for her to advance, but she planted her feet and would not be pushed back.
A rush of wind blew everyone’s clothes for a moment, and then Rush materialized at Machina’s side. He had, Liza realized, given the Costumes that had them back their equipment. Rush pressed a hurried kiss to Machina’s metal cheek and then was gone again in a gust of displaced air.
Sutekh snarled, easily batting away a bolt Noctourne had reflected back at him.
A brilliantly purple burst of light and heat erupted in Sutekh’s face. Sutekh lashed out with lightening from both hands in the direction the light had come from.
In the moment when he took a breath and prepared to strike again, Liza hit him in a full body tackle, shoulder taking him in the middle of his back. One hand caught a hold in his cape. The other snapped the power dampener around his neck.
Sutekh’s bellow of rage was cut short as they crashed to the ground, almost eight feet below. Liza had tackled him off the steps. She rolled off of him-not a comfortable landing, but it had saved her broken bones-and levelled her stunner at his chest.
Sutekh lay still in a heap at the foot of the steps.
Liza took a deep breath and looked up at the hero Sutekh’s last blast had been aimed at. She met violet eyes and swallowed tightly.
“Hey,” Kyle said, smiling slightly.
“Hey,” Liza answered roughly. There were new lines around his eyes and new scars she could see on his arms, but he was whole and his eyes were alert. She swallowed again and made herself look away from the over-bright purple eyes. “Lee,” she called. “Send someone to find Troy. Tell him we’ve got Set and the Costumes are with us.”
In the corner of her eye, Liza could see Rush and Machina-skin instead of metal again-hugging fiercely. Dagr and Scarlette were shaking hands and hugging the other Costumes. Jake had crossed the street to where Katie stood on the far corner with several news crews and he had an arm slung around her shoulders.
“On it,” Lee called, tossing a sketchy salute.
Noctourne touched her shoulder. “I can take that off your hands,” he said, low voice rumbling musically.
“Thanks,” she said, handing him the stunner and stepping away from the unconscious Sutekh. Duty done, she turned back towards Kyle.
He was in tattered jeans and what looked like a scrub shirt, suspiciously stained in a few places the scifi writer in her easily identified as the marks of testing and torture. His feet were bare, though he did not seem to notice the glass littering the street. He had lost weight, but there was an affectionate smile pulling at the edges of his mouth. “Kyle,” she whispered, stepping into his personal space.
Kyle leaned willingly into her arms, burying his face in her hair and clutching her to him tightly.
Liza closed her eyes for a long moment, face in his neck.
“God,” he murmured roughly. “I missed you.” Suddenly he laughed, pulling back to kiss her warmly. When they broke, he murmured into her shoulder, “Next time there’s a supervillain trying to take over the city, I’m leaving him to you.”
Face buried in the centre of his chest, Liza laughed until she cried, clinging to his arms.