Charlotte Powers 1: Power Down (16 page)

xx48.12.01 / 15:57 / Still Thursday

Writing this on the run. Well, not 'run'. Brisk walk. C2 is leading me through the lower levels (which are more like a cave than a facility, a natural cavern maybe with mesh walkways). We have to stop to hide often—thank goodness for holo-keyboards and their non-clicky keys!

Lots of people up ahead arguing about something, the cavern is too echoey to hear them properly. We have to wait until they get out of the way. Time to explain about C2.

After our argument she made her choice, but it wasn't to come with me (obviously) or go home. It wasn't to 'get by', either. C2's choice was to be a hero, but in
her
way.

On her own, she went into the admin building. She didn't sneak, she just walked in. No one stopped her or even asked why she was there. With the number of students around the campus searching for me and for other 'unknown variables', simply being in uniform (instead of in black form-fitting sneaky clothes like me—yes, I snuck back to my apartment to change) was the best disguise she could've had. She found an empty office and she checked every computer until she found one that was still logged in. She went through the records and emails on it until she found out what was going on here—of course, they didn't talk about it directly, but it turns out C2 can get a lot from a little. Maybe that's ironic, considering her total inability to intuit another person's feelings. Then again, maybe not. In her own words:

"Something bad is happening, something related to the mental control of the students. Recently the control was increased. You should keep that helmet on, the mesh on the outside will help shield you from the influence of the broadcast. I found references to the advanced program and felt the easiest way to proceed was to become a part of it. This was easy; they're rushing students through. There are eight groups coming to this facility today, over a hundred students in total. Regarding the source of the psychic broadcasts, based on the communications and records I was able to read I am almost certain that it is not mechanical. References were made to something that must be biological; living and in need of care. The source of the broadcasts fell sick last week and required urgent treatment. Machines don't get sick."

I am SO proud of her. The noisy group's splitting up and leaving now, I think we can move forward.

More 'structured' corridors now. C2 has a keycard, I have no idea where she got that. We're through into an 'inner' facility. It's very quiet except for a low hum that's making my teeth tingle. I think possi

...

We had to hide, there aren't guards here but there are a lot of technicians. Some of them are armed. I think this place goes even deeper than this, and we're REALLY far underground already. It's warm, uncomfortably warm. These corridors aren't white, they're just unpainted metal. Now we're coming up to

...

The transmitter isn't small. What I saw up top, covered by that dome, is only the very tip. It extends all the way down here—even further down than we are now, it's narrow but so, so long, they've drilled down, I think, into this cavern, it's hard to see up but it looks like it widens a little down below, I think there's some kind of room down there and that's where the transmitter ends. No, that's wrong. Not where it ends. Where it begins. Whatever the biological source of the broadcasts is, it's down there.

C2 looks scared. I think I probably do too. More corridors now, along away from the transmitter, now down, now back towards it again.

There's a room up ahead. C2 notices something. Monitoring room, and the technicians at the monitors are definitely armed.

...

I almost just got shot. I'm really shaking quite badly and I'm not sure how to stop. C2 is trying to get the monitors to show something useful instead of meaningless numbers. I just beat up two armed men. I almost got shot. I wrote that already. Guns are really loud, much louder than in the movies and on TV shows and in the training room. It really doesn't do sound very well. They're unconscious now, the men I mean. Still breathing. That's good. I don't want to kill anyone. That's not very 'hero' after all. Knocking someone out is really scary. It's really different to beating up Virtual Bad Guys. Real people don't just grunt and fall down. They make noises that are much more disturbing. The way they fall isn't very nice either. I hope no one else comes. It wasn't difficult to beat these two men. Although I did almost get shot. But I don't want to have to do it again if I can possibly avoid it. I think C2 has

...

I'm having to write this very carefully. If I don't write this down right now, to help both focus myself and distract myself, I think I'd probably throw up. My hands are shaking badly, worse than before. It's not because of the men I beat up. It's because I'm looking at the monitor and it's showing the source of the psychic broadcasts.

It's a girl.

She's young. Maybe younger than me. She's strapped to a kind of frame, and the frame is connected to the transmitter, which is above her. There are drips feeding into both her arms, and I think ... I think she has a catheter. Two catheters. She isn't crying. She's just staring straight ahead and it looks like she's saying something. There's no sound on these monitors. I'm quite glad there isn't. I don't think I want to hear whatever it is that she's saying.

C2 is crying. So am I. This is the most horrible thing I've ever seen.

...

Someone came to the monitoring room, another technician. Maybe she heard the noise from when I was almost shot. She was unarmed, but that isn't why it was easier to fight her. I didn't knock her out. I didn't threaten her, either, not exactly. I just explained very calmly about my curse, about how I cannot lie, about how I always have to tell the truth, and then I told her what I would do if she did not immediately tell me exactly how to get to that girl and how to free her.

I'm writing this now on the elevator back up to the surface. I have no powers. I'm just an ordinary girl with slightly above-average strength and slightly above-average agility. But I hope someone else tries to stop me. I hope they all try to stop me.

C2 is still down below, trying to get to the girl, trying to free her. She has the guns from the technicians I knocked out, and also their stun-batons. She can't read the emotions of others, she has no instinctive empathy, no way of intuitively knowing how others feel. But that doesn't mean she doesn't care. In fact, the opposite is true. C2 cares so deeply about how others feel that she constantly checks herself, examines herself, her actions, her words, she has to ask if she's boring someone, if she has offended them, because otherwise she has no way of knowing, and if she IS boring them, if she IS offending them, then that hurts her so badly ...

C2 feels things far more deeply than people realise. Maybe too deeply. And just because she can't read emotions doesn't mean she can't recognise suffering when she sees it.

I hope she uses the stun-batons before she uses the guns. But I don't think she'd hesitate to use either, on those who knew this was happening and did nothing to stop it, on those who helped make this happen.

The elevator's almost at the top. It's time for me to do my part of things. Because the technician didn't just tell me how to get to the girl. She told me about Segregation.

Those weren't fireworks I saw at the gym yesterday. And the big game is tonight. Every student who qualifies for 'advanced self-improvement' is already at the facility, which leaves those who didn't make the grade in the gym. The gym which has only one exit.

I haven't slept in days, I've been running and hiding and fighting for hours, kick off is in an hour and there are miles of bad guy infested forests between me and the school.

But even without super-agility, I can run. Even without super-strength, I can fight. And even without phase-shifting, I can win.

I'm Charlotte Powers. I'm a hero.

Let's see them try to stop me.

[End Of Recovered File] (o_o')

OpenPAL v4.0 Initialising . . .

xx48.12.05 | 19:12 | Sunday

First things first: I didn't die.

Second: I'm writing this on a new Opal. I don't actually like it as much as my old one, but ... well, I should start where things left off. It all feels like it happened a long time ago, but last Thursday isn't a day I'm going to forget in a hurry.

I wasn't stopped on my way out of the facility, and I evaded the patrols in the forest. That was the easy part. The hard part was what happened after I got to the gym, just minutes before kick-off. The doors were open and both the floor and the ceiling were retracted, turning the gym into an open-air rugby stadium; there was grass under my feet when I ran straight in, right to the middle of the field. I was too puffed to shout straight away and I needed to take a second to get my breath back. Everyone was staring at me; somehow, at that moment, I didn't care in the least. The gym was rigged to explode, probably with incendiaries so it would look like a fire. I had to warn everyone.

But before I could, Veronica Flux made her appearance. She was wearing shimmering white, a kind of bodysuit, and she smiled as she walked slowly towards me. We were the only two people on the field; the players had yet to come out.

"I knew you wouldn't be able to stay away,
hero
," she said. "You escaped my flames last time, but this time there's NOWHERE for you to run."

But I wasn't running.

Not away, at least.

I had no other choice; powerless, I charged her.

She sent a gout of flames towards me; I rolled to the side to avoid it, but she'd anticipated this and blasted me again, a burst of flames that I just barely managed to dodge by diving forward. I was close to her now, and if I could just—

But I couldn't, just.

She let out an elated whoop as she brought both hands around, and she sent out a burst of flames that engulfed me completely.

Obviously, I didn't die. I'm writing this, aren't I? Here's something you might not expect, though; I wasn't even burnt. I could feel the flames all around me, I could see them, I could HEAR them, but they weren't hurting me. They just made my skin tingle a little, and I could see my hands glowing in front of me, surrounded by a pale aura of near-invisible light.

And even then, I didn't cotton on.

Veronica didn't stop her flames for over ten seconds. The look on her face when she saw that I wasn't burnt to ashes was pretty much worth everything I'd suffered through.

"Yeah! Go Veronica!"

Unfortunately, she recovered quickly, no doubt aided by her fan club—that is, EVERYONE IN THE STANDS. The people I was there to RESCUE, the people I was trying to SAVE, were CHEERING for the SUPERVILLAIN.

NOTHING is fair.

"Great trick, Flux!"

They thought it was some kind of show. They thought Veronica had set all of this up. They thought it was special effects or something. I guess I can't blame them, I mean they'd just seen me get completely engulfed in flames for almost a quarter of a minute and I'd come out completely unscathed—

—except my clothes hadn't.

I was naked. Not COMPLETELY naked, my underwear was apparently close enough to my aura that it wasn't affected by Veronica's flames (or maybe Mum was right and polydium underwear really IS a girl's best friend), but still. It wasn't a good look.

But oh my goodness the students in the stands did find it SO amusing.

While I was distracted by the reaction of the crowds, Veronica was trying to escape—she'd realised her flames couldn't hurt me—but I wasn't letting her off that easily. I caught her after a few dozen metres, managed to grab her arm and pull her around. She kept her footing, but that just left her wide open for me to draw back my hand and slap that perfect little face of hers as hard as I could. Which turned out to be pretty hard, actually. I didn't have super-strength, but right then I didn't NEED super-strength. That slap I gave her was all me, no powers, no 'scientific promotion', just ME, and it felt GOOD.

Of course, the people in the stands booed me. I can't win, can I? But a perfect moment cannot be ruined, not even by the actions of ignorant bystanders.

Unfortunately, I let myself get distracted by the crowd, and Veronica managed to punch me in the chin—it hurt and it sent me staggering, but then I was after her again, she sent a gout of flame against me but once again it did nothing, had no effect whatsoever except to make me tingle a little, and then I was on her and I tried a tackle but she sidestepped and slipped away, I missed and went tumbling, and by the time I'd picked myself up she was off the field and out of the gym—not by the main entrance, though, not even down into the locker rooms, but instead through into the area being renovated.

Without thinking I followed, chasing her through the corridors and catching her in one of the big rooms, filled with loose wooden planks and buckets of paint and roller brushes and other renovation stuff, left lying here for weeks, maybe months. I slammed into her which in turn sent her slamming against a wall, then I grabbed her hair and pulled her back, spinning her around to throw her into the wall again. She cried out as she hit against it, then I was on her again, grabbing her head—

Then something hit me in the back, something solid and heavy, I think one of the paint tins. I let go of Veronica and spun around to see the head of the student council in the entrance to the room. Not just the head, but The Head.

"Couldn't take care of her yourself?" he said to Veronica, as she scuttled away from me. Her lip was bleeding and her face was bruised; she looked
great
. "How on earth could you not, her ability is
telling the truth
, it's the most pathetic power I've ever heard of."

I went to charge him, but he flung his arm out and suddenly one of the planks was rising up, then he thrust his hand towards me with a totally unnecessary flourish and the plank was flying at my head. I managed to half-duck half-fall under it, but that just left me prone and open for his next assault, which was a tinful of thick nails. None of them actually pierced my skin, but that doesn't mean they didn't hurt. He telekinetically lifted and threw a hammer at me next, it just barely missed my head as I ran to the side.

"Stand still and let me HIT you!" The Head growled, after I'd dodged another thrown plank.

"Not so easy, is she?" Veronica said, from where she stood nearby with her arms crossed.

"So help!"

"My flames didn't work," Veronica said, as I took a bucket right in the gut and staggered away. "Why do you think she's in her underwear? All I could burn was her clothes. She's resistant."

"No she's not!" The Head muttered—he was getting breathless now, doing all that telekinetic attacking must be tiring.

"Fine then, she's not," said Veronica, and she sent a burst of fire at me. I tried to dodge it but I was still recovering from that bucket and the edge of her flames washed over my right leg. It didn't hurt me, but it was different to before, the tingling was somehow both stronger and weaker, and there was no visible glow where the flames struck me.

"How are you doing that?" The Head demanded.

"I don't know!" I said. I couldn't lie; at that time I honestly DIDN'T know. Then a really unwelcome voice came from outside the room, followed by a REALLY unwelcome face:

"—believe you'd drag me in here, they NEED me out there, bro!"

Ray
. I just stared at him, and he stared at me.

"
Her
?" he said. The contempt in his voice was sickening. "She ain't NOTHING, I TOLD you that, why do you need ME to help take care of HER?"

"Because she's stronger than she looks," said The Head. He was clearly still tired from attacking me. I was still tired from him attacking me, too. "Come on, take care of her."

Ray hesitated. The Head turned on him, angry now. "There's not even going to BE a 'big game', didn't you realise that? They don't 'need you out there', I need you in here, she knows far too much, WE need her GONE, now DO IT!"

Ray blinked at The Head, then he threw a rugby ball at me. I would've laughed, except it bounced off the wall behind me and straight into the back of my head. The impact was unbelievable, I felt like my head should've just snapped right off and I came within an inch of losing consciousness. As it was everything went blurry and dark and I felt myself falling but didn't know how to stop it, and then I wasn't falling but it was because Veronica had grabbed me, and she slapped me, hard, and again, and then again, I managed to struggle free and stagger back but that just put me up against Ray, and then he was grabbing me, he had my arms and this time his grip was perfect, this time I couldn't get away and I hate to admit it but I froze up, just completely went into shock because this was my nightmare, him holding me and me not being able to get free, and now he had his arm around me, around my chest, it was pressing hard against my breasts and that too was horrible, he was so close and holding me so tight I felt like I was going to burst, and through all that fear and pain I realised I'd been burnt, ACTUALLY burnt, my leg was throbbing, and Veronica was in front of me, smiling as she raised her hands again, and The Head stood nearby, recovered, ready, watching me and Veronica and waiting for her to kill me because she could burn me now, somehow she could burn me now, and I couldn't get free of Ray's grip, I never paid attention to 'escaping holds', I always just figured I could phase-out to escape them!

And then I did.

Just my arms, but that was enough; Ray's hands went right through me and I stumbled forward, towards Veronica, but it was too late, she was already blasting fire at me—

Except it wasn't at me. It was through me. And I heard Ray yell behind me, Veronica's flames had hit him instead of me, not seriously, not a crippling injury, but enough to make him cry out in pain. I felt a nostalgic kind of thick, slow feeling as The Head threw a plank straight through me, and I actually laughed as it whacked into Veronica and Ray instead—except then I didn't have so much to laugh about, in fact I couldn't laugh at all because I was already short of breath, I was already slipping back, I couldn't keep my grip on it—

I gasped as I rushed back into-phase, panting but staggering away, I was really feeling every bit of hurt I'd suffered now but I made a mistake, I made a terrible mistake, I was staggering AWAY from the door, I was in a corner, I was trapped, still panting with the effort it had taken to go out-of-phase, and The Head had spotted a workbench, a huge great long solid workbench and already he was picking it up, holding it ready, spinning it around so that there would be no escape, I would be crushed flat against the wall when he hurled it at me with all of the mental strength that he had.

Which is exactly what happened. I felt an intense pressure and then a horrible release, and for one long awful moment I was sure that I'd just popped; that with no other option my entire body had exploded between the hard wall and the solid bench.

But the wall wasn't hard.

It was made of soft plaster, yet to be reinforced.

And I was no longer hurting.

I was
strong
.

I was half-stuck in the wall, but I drew my arm back through the soft plaster and then I forced it forwards in a hard punch that sent the workbench flying out. With a wild cry and a wrench of my body I pulled myself free of the wall and stepped forward. The workbench was at least four metres long and made of extremely dense wood. Probably it weighed at least as much as, oh, say, a fancy steel-reinforced couch.

I picked it up and tossed it aside like it was nothing. It took both arms to do it, but really, WHO CARES.

"I have my phasing back," I said, as I walked slowly towards The Head. Veronica and Ray were at his side, Ray on his left, Veronica on his right. They were all staring at me. "I have my strength back."

I stopped, and I smiled.

"One more to test."

At once, all three of them attacked.

But really, they never had even a chance of winning.

Veronica was first; I slid under her flames and came up with a plank in one hand and a heavy sheet in the other. I threw the plank at her as she turned and ran and its weight slammed her into the floor, face-first. I followed with the sheet, and in an instant she was tied and helpless, her hands against her sides.

Next was The Head. The bucket he threw I ducked under, the plank I ran along a wall to avoid. He flung his arm desperately up as I launched myself at him, but too weak and far too slow. The paint roller he managed to throw at me bounced off my leg, and then I had him on the ground, pinned.

That's when a paint bucket slammed into my head. I felt it, it definitely hurt, but it didn't come close to stopping me. I stood and turned to see Ray, standing with his rugby ball in his hand.

"Unconscious ballistic calculation," I said, as he stood there, tense. "Like Red Rocket and Trigger Harpy. I bet you could put that ball anywhere you wanted."

His eyes flicked to the ball, then back to me.

"
Try it
," I growled.

He did.

BIG mistake.

A rugby ball to the groin thrown by a normal person hurts.

A rugby ball to the groin thrown by the super-strong girl you were
unforgivably
inappropriate with comes very close to killing. As it was he simply collapsed, unconscious, with a sweet little grunt of indescribable pain.

When I turned away from his still form it was to see Veronica and The Head, both of them standing—Veronica had burnt through the plank and the sheet. She's stronger than I expected.

I have to be honest here; doing all that took a lot out of me. I was exhausted, sleep-deprived, and I'd just used powers that I'd been without for a month. I could feel all of them slipping, I could feel everything slipping, and I didn't know if I could take down those two.

Luckily I didn't have to. They turned and ran.

Again, I have to be honest; I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I wearily half-staggered, half-limped out to the corridor, back to the field; the game was still on and the gym was still wired to explode. Or so I thought.