Superheroine - Chapter 32
“We can‘t just sit here!” Beth pleaded, leaning off the hotel sofa and reaching forward to squeeze Stanley’s arm. “For all we know, the missing prisoners are dead. We can’t let that happen to Ethan.”
Stanley sat on the end of the bed, his laptop computer open next to him, and looked back at Beth with sad eyes.
“Beth, I want to find him as much as you do. I was lucky when the phone from Dominick’s man led us to the farm. But none of its location data has lead me to where Dominick might be holding Ethan. Just his guy’s home, a gym, gas stations, several burger joints, stores, and other normal stuff. And I finally hacked into Dominick’s home network. There are no clues there, either. He either isn’t much of a computer guy, or he knows not to keep Fizzure information at his home.”
Beth groaned, but said nothing.
“I‘m not giving up,” Stanley said in a soft, soothing tone. “I think our best shot is Philip Gruden. He was Dominick’s lead scientist before going into hiding, so he might know where Dominick would set up shop. I’m got into his home network, too, including his surveillance cameras. I doubt he’ll show up there, but if we’re lucky, he might remote into his network. If he does, I might be able to trace things back to him.”
“Wouldn’t Dominick be on the lookout for that, too? Do you really think Gruden would be that careless?”
Stanley gave a grim smile. “That’s the best idea I have right now.”
Beth sank back onto the sofa in Stanley’s hotel room, curled her legs underneath her, and buried her face in her hands. The tears were coming again. This would be too much. First John, and now Ethan.
“This is my fault,” she said, the bitterness creeping up in her voice. “Again. Ethan was there to rescue me.”
“Beth, I understand. But this isn’t your fault.”
“I sent Ethan and the other prisoners out on their own, so I could go take on some of Dominick’s men,” she said, lowering her hands from her face. “I should have made sure they were safe first.”
“And then the police might have none of his men in custody, and no leads at all. You should be proud, not guilty. It was amazing how you handled things at the farm.”
Beth chewed her lip as she thought back to her various fights with Dominick’s men. She shook her head. “It should have been easier. If I hadn’t taken so long to beat them, I would have gotten the prisoners to safety.”
“By my count, you took down 13 men. That’s almost hard to believe. I’m not sure what you expect. You’re new to this and still did an amazing job.”
Beth shook her head slowly. “I can’t explain it, Stanley, but I know I should have been quicker. Those fights should have been one-sided, without them laying a hand on me. I was five times faster and stronger than any of those goons. But it was more than that. In each fight I felt instincts rise to the surface, helping me do things I shouldn’t know how to do. But those instincts, wherever they came from, were rusty. Less rusty with each fight, but still rusty. If I had taken my self-defense classes seriously, I would have been unstoppable.”
“From what you told me about those fights, I doubt your instincts came from your self-defense classes,” Stanley said. He seemed to bite back a smirk, before he shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe they did. But anyone with training would be more dangerous. If you ever decide you want proper training, I can see that you get it.”
“It’s too late for that,” she said, her voice rising. “They have Ethan, and if we don’t find him soon, he’ll be dead. And that’s on me!”
Stanley stared at her, his forehead wrinkled in thought. He was silent for a moment, as if waging an internal battle. He took a deep breath. “Let me tell you a story from my past.”
Beth looked up at Stanley as if he were about to reveal his deepest secret. In a way he was, she thought. Or at least one of his many deep secrets. Stanley had made it clear from early in her relationship with his son that he could never discuss his past. Based on his skills, she assumed he had worked for the CIA or a similar military organization, but that was a guess.
“Many years ago,” he said, “I was on assignment in a dangerous area when someone on my team was blown to pieces. He had asked me to send him ahead while I took care of other matters. Essential matters, but I should have been the one to die, not him. It was the sort of job I usually handled myself.”
Beth wanted to probe Stanley for more details, but she knew better. She remained quiet.
“I’m telling you this because I don’t want to have happen to you what happened to me,“ he said, before pausing with another deep sigh. “I blamed myself. Went into quite a funk, actually. As a result, I nearly got me and my team killed a month later, when I froze when our team was in a high-risk situation. I needed to make a hard decision, but I didn‘t want to put anyone on my team in harm’s way. I believed I was the most capable — and I was — so I should take all the risks. I couldn’t make a decision.”
The old man paused with a faraway look in his eyes, as if reliving events. His eyes came back to focus, and he stared at Beth with a burning intensity.
“It took me a long time to learn the obvious, which is that I couldn’t do everything myself. I couldn’t carry my team’s burdens myself. Other people make choices, too. Other people take risks. Other people can try to be the hero. Not just me. What happened to my man wasn’t my fault. It was the fault of the killer. My man chose to take the lead the day he died, just like Ethan chose to help find you. What happened is the fault of the people who kidnapped him.”
Beth stared at Stanley, processing his words. He was telling her Ethan could make his own choices, but there was more to it than that. He was giving her a lesson for her future.
“If you continue to be Sapphire Angel, I want you to remember something very important,” he said. “You might be a hero, but you need to accept that you can’t carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. If you think everything depends on you, life will get very hard, very fast. Nobody can bear that kind of burden. There are others out there trying to do good in this world. Maybe not with powers like you, but they’re trying to help, too. Sometimes you need to let them. If I could teach you one thing, it would be that.”
Beth averted Stanley’s gaze as she absorbed his words. She knew he had a point, and a wealth of experience. But her situation was different. Stanley didn’t possess incredible powers. He wasn’t bulletproof. He wasn’t stronger than an Olympic weightlifter, or more agile than a champion gymnast. His team member had died because Stanley had made a necessary decision. Ethan had been captured because Beth had made a bad one.
When she looked up at him, he was looking sideways at his computer screen. His face was white.
“What is it, Stanley?”
“A local news headline. ‘Philip Gruden, Fizzure scientist, found dead at Garman Park.’”
The driver pulled Demarco Dominick’s sedan into the old brick building, and two men swung steel doors shut behind them. After the car came to a stop, Dominick stepped out of the vehicle and surveyed the surroundings.
The dirt and rubble made the place look like war zone, as if a bomb had gone off in the middle of the building but left the walls and roof standing. He wished he had thought to tidy things up when he had bought the building a year earlier. Eventually his men could paint over the graffiti on the walls, fix the broken windows, and clear the cobwebs from the rafters. But that could wait.
For his current needs, the place would suffice. The building was old, but not decrepit. Not weak. Even covered in dirt and grime, the brick walls and steel beams in the ceiling gave the place a sturdy feeling, as if it could withstand whatever nature could throw at it. Best of all, the structure was in a remote part of the county. There was little chance someone of importance would stumble upon it.
Two other cars sat in a line, further into the building. A massive boiler, part of the building‘s heating system, loomed against the back wall. It dominated the room, resembling a large, fat torpedo standing on end.
Tied to the boiler were three young adults. The soon-to-be subjects of his experiments. They were unconscious but still gagged.
A man stepped toward him.
“The scientists are upstairs,” the man said, pointing over his shoulder to a metal staircase climbing up the left wall.
This entire ground floor was open, with some crates scattered amongst the rubble, stacked, and rising toward the low ceiling. The open beams overhead gave the place an unfinished feel.
Without saying a word Dominick moved forward to the stairs. They rattled with each of his heavy footfalls. He reached the second floor, stepping into a hallway in even more a state of disarray than the garage entry on the ground floor.
As he looked down the dim hallway, he spied chunks of plaster and paint on the floor. Fluorescent lights flickered in the ceiling above him, but were overwhelmed by a bright light coming from a doorway at the end of the hall.
He picked his way through the debris on the floor and made his way to the light. When he reached it, a long, rectangular room opened in front of him. The large glass cylinder, brought here from the basement of the Fizzure headquarters, dominated the space. Three of his top scientists leaned around it, inspecting it like a jeweler might examine a flawless diamond. One of them glanced over his shoulder at Dominick, before standing to address the large man.
“It looks good, sir,” the man said. “No damage. We just need to run the cables.”
“How long will that take?”
“An hour or two.”
“Then let’s not waste any time. Get started. Have someone else prepare a prisoner. Pick the healthiest one.”
“That would be the new kid. Ethan Moore. But he hasn’t been through the normal testing.”
“I don’t care. If it kills him, it kills him.”
“Very well, sir.”
“And get the security cameras up. I don't want any surprises.”
Dominick started toward the car to retrieve his briefcase, but stopped and reached into his pocket. He had almost forgotten about the paper from the man with silver eyes. He turned toward the scientist and handed it over.
“Have someone get to work on this. We may end up needing it before the night is out.”
From a thick grove of trees on one of two hilltops, the man with silver eyes watched as Dominick’s vehicle disappeared into the warehouse and the metal door slammed shut. The man smiled and shook his head. Dominick was a fool for thinking he wouldn’t discover this place. The Fizzure CEO did nothing without the robed man’s knowledge.
He grabbed the large pack at his feet, zipped it, and slung it over his shoulder. The pack was now empty, and the explosive charges placed in and around the building. If Dominick looked hard enough, he would find them. But he was too focused on his experiment to look.
The man with the silver eyes shook his head slowly, as if processing a piece of bad news. It gave him no pleasure to see all his progress wiped out before fruition, but it was necessary. He was playing the long game. His presence here couldn’t be discovered. Not yet. There would be other chances to pick up where Dominick’s work left off, even if it took months, years, or decades.
By the time the timer counted down, he would be far away, and any trace of his involvement would be blown to pieces.
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