Izzy

Helix and I crashed into the room below, which looked like a really swank office before we left it full dust and rubble. I kicked the massive hardwood desk in the center of the room up to form a makeshift ramp that Circuit could use to half roll half slide his chair down to us. Helix and I caught him by the wheels of his chair. As we set his chair back on its wheels. As we did Helix said, “Another floor down, Izzy.”

“You sure?” I asked.

He grinned. “Circuit may have built this place to counter me but I’m betting his lackey-”

“Davis,” Circuit put in.

“I doubt Davis,” Helix continued, “could have kept things Circuit-proof and me-proof. Another floor down.”

There wasn’t much more of an explanation forthcoming so I smashed my was through another floor, trying not to calculate the damages we were going to have to pay out when this was over. Project Sumter might have nearly bottomless pockets thanks to Federal funding but we do have to get our budget approved every year just like everyone else. People who put too much strain on that budget can loose their jobs. Of course, I was a rookie and Helix was the season agent so hopefully that meant he knew what he was doing.

The next corner down was a large cubicle farm and I had to clear a landing place before Helix could jump down. To save time I just went back up and brought Circuit back down with me, chair and all. For good measure I went up again and dragged the desk over to the hole and tipped it onto the hole, slipping down under it as it fell, so anyone trying to follow would have to waste time moving it. The whole process took maybe thirty seconds but I came back to find Circuit and Helix arguing again.

“No, it’s not a matter of trust,” Circuit was saying. “But I’m not charging through the building at random just because you remember a skyline and think you know where we can see it at.”

“Not what I was saying,” Helix said, smiling for some reason. “I don’t know the city well enough to guess what part of it was looking at from just the skyline, that’s what I have people like Mossburger and Movsessian for. But I do know you, and I know you tend to be really stingy with what you tell people.”

“Information control is at the heart of supervillainy, Helix.” Circuit’s tone was the closest I think he’ll ever get to saying, “Duh!”

“Sure, if you say so.” Helix didn’t sound like he was paying much attention. “But I’m guessing you never mentioned to Davis that I could sense heat, as well as manipulate it.”

Understanding dawned on Circuit’s face. “He didn’t insulate the new control throne he created for his pet fusebox. It must be leaking more heat than a server farm with all the power it would take to keep things running.”

“So what’s the plan?” I asked, glancing nervously around the big open space. Helix wasn’t tall enough to be seen over the cubicle walls, and I’d appreciate if he never finds out I said that, while Circuit was always sitting down so that left me feeling like the only groundhog looking out of it’s hole while the hawks were circling. It’s not a fun feeling, let me tell you.

Helix, oblivious to how exposed I was feeling at the moment, pointed across the cubicles and said, “Run that way until you run out of building and you’ll find the place Circuit’s lookalike is hanging out.”

“I hope you don’t want me to actually run out of the building,” I said, “because I’ve had enough of that for one day.” His expression told me he didn’t know what I mean and I didn’t feel like relating my last near-skydiving experience just then. “Never mind. I just run in a straight line? Through the walls and everything?”

“Yes.” Helix scowled. “They’re expecting us to play it by the rules. I’m not really in a mood to give it to them. We go straight to them, we tie them up, we take them to jail. No questions asked. Problems?”

I shook my head and Circuit just grunted. Somehow Helix had wrangled himself back to being in charge, something I had a feeling he was used to doing. Still, I wasn’t going to argue. I’d had to take a basic architecture class or two last year, to help me figure out what not to break, so I knew there weren’t likely to be load bearing walls along the perimeter of a building this size, so going straight forward wasn’t likely to cause structural problems and that was really the only possible reason I could think of not to do what Helix was suggesting. After all that Davis and his cronies had put me through it was time for some payback.

So I turned in the direction Helix pointed in and I went forward. Not as fast as I could, I didn’t want to get too far ahead of Circuit or my boss. Papa always says your can’t be too close, after all. But bursting through walls is kind of a thrill and by the time I was through the second one I was putting on some speed, dashing past or jumping over a barely seen mess of office furniture, computer equipment and fake looking potted plants. At one point I broke out into a hallway again for half a second and I guessed I was at the halfway point of the building. For lack of a better way to keep track I started counting the walls we went through as a way to keep track of how much building was left. I was expecting to burst a dozen before we found the throne Helix was looking for.

In point of fact there were only ten. The last room was really big and, from the looks of the carpet, most of the stuff that had been in it had been dragged outside to make room for the nest of cables and computer equipment that sat in a semicircle around some kind of socket or mounting in the middle of the room. I spotted at least a dozen people in my quick glance around the room, only about half of them looked to be armed in the heavy-duty way of the guards we’d run across so far. It looked like we’d finally found some of the technical types who had to be keeping all this mess running. In the minus column, all the people in the room who did look like guards had apparently figured out what direction we were coming from and turned to face the wall I’d made an entrance through. They weren’t all looking directly at me but most of them had their weapons pointed in the right general direction.

And it turned out Helix was right, we did have to literally run out of building to get Circuit’s lookalike. A hole had been cut in the outside wall sometime during the night – because there was no way that exit was up to building code – and hovering outside it, some seventy-five floors above the ground, was a black throne to do any evil overlord justice. The guy sitting in it was pretty much a carbon copy of all the photos I’d seen of Circuit at the height of his career, stylish suit, scarf wrapped around his face, he had to be sweating to death in the August heat. Maybe Helix had been able to locate him so easily just because they’d put this hole in the building.

Of course, he shattered the illusion almost immediately by pointing at me and yelling, in a voice with none of Circuit’s sense of dignity, “Kill her!”

Which was my cue to scramble for cover.

 

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