Scorched

No one else who gave a shit.

"Long story," I offered at last, trying to keep it light.

"I've got all night—" An electric alarm screeched, and he spun his chair around to face the screens. "Uh-oh. It's on."

I leaned over him. "What was that?"

"I've got alerts set on CCTV and satellite surveillance. My algorithm matches known villains with suspicious activity, police comms traffic, emergency calls, that sort of thing. Not always accurate, but it lets me sleep." He pointed, and virtual video burst forth in black and white. "Look. Hostage situation. Looks like… the Bay Bridge."

I peered closer, and my pulse quickened. A thin figure in a shiny black catsuit leapt about like a big insect on the five westbound lanes of the upper deck. Her long black hair flew in the breeze. She was tossing cars left and right with what looked like a lasso made of thick glassy rope.

"Fuck." My fists clenched. "I know that skinny Gallery bitch."

"Arachne." Glimmer typed swiftly, his dark gaze darting from screen to screen. "Last week she cleared an attempted murder rap for crashing a trolley car. Looks like she's getting her own back." He jumped up, scooped his long leather coat from the desk and tossed it to me. "You up for some action?"

Nonplussed, I caught it. The worn leather warmed my fingers. "Uh. Sure."

He unearthed a pistol—matte black, semiautomatic—from the junk on his desk, and swiftly checked the magazine. Smart lad. I approved. Like I said, life isn't a comic book, and all the augments in the world won't save you from a bullet in the neck. Only an idiot takes anything less than a gun to a gunfight. "Good," he said, clearing the chamber with a snap! "Put that on and let's go."

"But it's not cold," I protested, more out of contrariness than any distaste for wearing his coat. Au contraire. Clever, cute, reclusive, a disarming touch of paranoia. He could even cook. Hell, I could learn to like this Glimmer character, if his bleeding heart didn't get us both killed first.

I blushed, though he couldn't hear my thoughts. Or at least I hoped he couldn't. Jeez. Did I have a fever, or was that a soft spot coming on?

"It will be, on the bike." He caught my amused glance, and paused, the magazine halfway back in and a bruised expression on his face. "What?"

I laughed, and it felt good in my belly. "Because you couldn't just drive a car, or anything uncool like that. The dark and dangerous mystery man. Hell, I bet the girls really go for that."

Shadows flickered over his face, so brief I almost missed it. And then he finished with the pistol and clipped it to his belt, and wrinkled his cute upturned nose at me in a smile. "I'll let you be the judge. You ready?"

I shrugged his coat on, and cracked my neck, flexing the warm invisible muscle of my power. “Let’s go.”

9 (#u7ec06da1-b29d-5425-b9ac-a6246f9e9543)

Traffic clogged the on-ramp to the bridge's lower deck, horns honking in the warm night air. We passed a couple of black police LAVs, en route to the carnage but as caught in traffic as everyone else. Luckily for us, we wanted the upper level. The one where we were heading in the opposite direction to everyone else.

When you're doing this? There's no point in driving like you give a shit.

Glimmer gunned the motor, and scooted over the median strip and up the wrong side of the interstate. Drivers swerved, cursed, flipped us the bird. Moonlight rippled through wispy fog as he weaved the bike in and out, headlights flashing at us. Heh. It was fun. The swaying was exhilarating and calming at the same time.

I held on, Glimmer's back warm against my cheek. He felt strange but familiar, like a friend long lost, a blurred memory of someone I once knew. Maybe he just reminded me of Chance, with his crazy hair and wild-thing smile, but there was a fair slice of Adonis in him, too, the determination that hardened his stubbled jaw, the tension in his lean muscles. A serious young thing. Weight of the world, and all that. What had happened to him, I wondered, to make him so intense?

We crossed above the waterfront and out over the wide dark expanse of the Bay. Salty seaside breeze dragged my hair back from my masked face, fingered beneath my clothes. I huddled tighter in his coat. I didn't know much about bikes, but this one was gleaming chrome and ruby-red, well cared for, but not polished within an inch of its life like he had nothing better to do. We'd emerged from his underground ramp onto some dark backstreet, a couple of blocks from the docks, warehouses and freight company offices and yards crammed with shipping containers stacked four high. The engine's sweet note rattled in my ears, and red taillights flashed in the mirrors as we canted to the side to get around a truck.

Ahead, I could hear screams, amid the crunch and crash of abused metal and glass. Now the lines of traffic were crooked, cars bunched together like they'd stopped in a hurry. A few had collided, their fenders dented and headlights smashed, and glass fragments littered the road amid swearing drivers.

Wreckage littered the bridge across all five lanes. One car lay upturned with wheels spinning, another had slammed into the suspension cables and nearly sliced in two. A minivan lay on its side, and its dazed occupants clambered out through jagged glass to crawl away.

And in the middle of it all, Arachne leapt and wailed like a triumphant banshee. She wore shiny black leggings and heavy boots, beneath a tight black scoop-necked top that covered her skinny arms to the wrist. Her waist-length black hair flapped. She flung out her arm, snapping her rigid palm outwards, and her augment uncoiled itself: a glassy rope, like the silken line a spider makes, only thicker and much, much stronger.

It speared from the center of her palm, ten, twenty, thirty feet, and split, into three grippy glass claws that slapped across a shiny black car's roof and lodged there, sharp points stabbing through the steel.

People screamed, and scattered. Arachne just laughed, a horrid shrieking sound like a thousand cicadas in agony, and pulled.

The rope retracted, back to where it had come from, almost too fast for me to watch. Her claws unhooked, and the car sailed through the air and hit the suspension cables. Crash! The thick steel bars thrummed, a deep-throated harp. The car's windows shattered, the screeching buckle of steel. Arachne's glassy hookvine broke, and fell to the road, where it splintered into a thousand tiny fragments. She hopped like a dervish in delight, and flung out another, heaving a second car high into the air and dashing it to mangled scraps on the road.

My heart clogged my throat. That one was empty. The next might not be.

Glimmer skidded the bike to a halt, and we jumped off. Already, the bridge began to shake. My pulse raced. Too much more of this, and there'd be serious damage as the wires stretched and bent. Not to mention injuries, broken cars, the traffic snarl from hell…

Glimmer cocked his pistol and wiped sweat back into his hair with his forearm. His midnight eyes glittered inside his mask, no longer warm but sharp black icicles, deadly. "Can you lift a car?"

"Sure." I cracked my neck, left and right. Hell, I hoped so. My power hadn't exactly been cooperative over the last forty-eight hours. Still, a car shouldn't be a problem. Putting it down quietly might be another matter, but Glimmer didn't need to know that.

"Then stop her breaking anything else." And he ducked for cover and ran. Leaving me no time to argue or say no.

Gallant little skunk, wasn't he? I swore, and got on with it.

Arachne saw us, and hooted laughter. "Pretty things in masks," she gloated. Augmented fire ignited in her eyes. Her scarlet-painted lips curled, a sharp bloody smile soaked in hatred. "Come get it."

Glimmer leveled his pistol at her, two-handed. "First, last and only chance, lady. Give yourself up."

"Go fuck yourself." She rolled her skinny wrists, and flashed out twin glassy vines. They crawled across the ground like psycho snakes, searching for prey.

Glimmer didn't say anything. He just fired. I like a man who keeps his promises.

Quick as a jumping spider, Arachne leapt, impossibly high. The bullet sang harmlessly between the steel cables. Her vines split, their evil claws glistening like wet glass, and crunched onto the roof of an orange-striped white bus. People still clambered about inside, the ones who hadn't worked up the guts to run. Now, escape was impossible. They screamed, slapping their palms on the windows, wild and ripe with terror.

Arachne landed in a whippy-legged crouch, hair streaming aloft. She let loose a triumphant wail that shivered my bones, and pulled.

I sprinted, heart thumping, and flung out a wall of power on one outstretched fist. Hot wind seared my face. The bus slammed into my invisible wall and stuck there, shuddering on its side in mid-air, her hooked vines still attached to the roof.

Inside, the people tumbled and squeaked like trapped rats. A window broke, and a girl fell out, dropping twenty feet to the road. She lay there moaning, and Glimmer ran for her and dragged her from the bus's looming shadow.

Arachne cursed, spitting little drops of poison that caught the air like a cloud of angry gnats, and dived for me. The backs of my hands blistered. I braced myself, legs apart, and held on. Arachne yanked her vines harder, gritting her teeth. Still I held on. The bus shuddered and groaned, metal twisting under the opposing forces. Sweat poured down my temples, soaking my mask. My head ached, bright and stinging like sunburn. I couldn't see. The stink of hot metal choked my nose, and I could feel my back stretching under the stress, muscles popping fibers and bones twisting.

But damn, it felt good to let my power loose.

I flexed my fist, and the bus's steel shell twisted, just a few inches. The metal creaked in protest. My blood burned, urging me to more, harder, darker. A bad person would crush Arachne with this bus. Hurl it on top of her and grind her to bloody pulp, and damn the consequences…

Glimmer ran forward. Now he was between Arachne and the bus. Damn it. I gritted my teeth, and held on.

Arachne spat poison at him, and whipped her wrists downwards. Her vines snapped off, only a few inches from her palm. The long ends dangled from the bus, slapping lifelessly onto the ground. Quick as a striking snake, she speared them out anew, five wicked barbs on each, like twisting hands clawing for Glimmer's face.

I wasn't sure whether what happened next was real.

Glimmer ducked, so swift he blurred. The snaking spikes shot past him, writhing, searching blindly for prey. She howled and tried to whirl, to re-attack from a different angle. But Glimmer kept running at her. He grabbed her hair and yanked, forcing her to look at him, and snapped his fingers an inch from her eyes. "Watch me," he commanded.

Her flame-bright eyes shuttered black.