A blue arc of electricity shot out of E’s hands. It wasn’t especially powerful, but it was bright and loud, and that startled the hero. For all his strength and durability, Supercollider’s reaction time and mental capacity were still entirely human. He blinked and took a step back, instinctively tucking Jeremy a little more fully behind him to protect the boy. That gave E the room he needed . . . and the villain bolted.
He ran past me, and I saw him grinning with a kind of unbridled, ecstatic fury. It dawned on me he was enjoying this, that drawing the attention of a hero—of a real hero—was his greatest accomplishment as a villain so far.
“Cover!” As soon as the Electric Eel shrieked, the Meat seemed to come to life. The two by the door pulled out guns. Deeper in the room, one of the three survivors, the one holding the bag the cleaver had been in, pulled out something strange and circular, like a thick saw blade. The weapon spat out a gout of red, wet light in a messy arc, like a spray of lava. The three heroes darted and rolled to get out of the way as the light cut a swath through the room, eating aggressively into the floor. One of the pair from R&D, the giggly woman with red hair from the car, didn’t get out of the way in time when it splashed near her. I saw a chunk of her fall away from the rest, an arm and a flash of white rib, accompanied by the smell of burning flesh, and she collapsed.
Supercollider used his invulnerable body to shield Jeremy from the spray, keeping the boy carefully behind him. With the hero occupied for a few precious seconds, the Electric Eel managed to make it to the door. He cackled as he left, sprinting down the hallway toward his supercar and escape. Accelerator tried to intercept him, but the spray from the lava gun was too unpredictable and he had to dive behind Supercollider to avoid being cauterized. While he was incredibly fast, the sidekick was almost as fragile as an ordinary person.
With E gone, all of the henches were left alone with the heroes. Quantum Entanglement made her way over to Supercollider and the pair exchanged a couple of hushed words. She threw up a force field around her and Jeremy, scooping the kid away from her partner. She lifted Jeremy easily, and the traumatized kid wrapped his arms and legs around her as if he were a much smaller child. He stuck his thumb in his mouth.
Supercollider nodded to her and she levitated herself and the kid out through the broken window and toward safety. I could hear sirens below; in a moment he’d be safely in the hands of some EMTs. The rest of us, however, were trapped with Supercollider and some maniac with a lava gun. The hero’s face was a blank, stern mask. I sank to the floor, trying to become invisible.
Supercollider began to slog through the spray of liquid heat still being poured onto him. It couldn’t damage him, but it made him grimace as he fought forward. It was slow going and seemed to sting. The carpet and the soles of Supercollider’s boots were melting together, each step a stretch of blackened rubber. The weapon began firing more erratically as he approached, running out of power or beginning to malfunction. The red light sprayed out in a thinning spatter pattern, like water from a broken nozzle. A bit splashed dangerously close to me and I scrambled up, trying to put more distance between my body and the furiously hot, rapidly disintegrating floor.
The Meat shifted his aim, sending the staccato spray toward Accelerator, thinking perhaps he’d have better luck doing harm to the sidekick, who had been using his speed to dart ever closer. Supercollider took the opportunity to rush the Meat, and unluckily, trying to keep myself from being burned to a crisp, I had stumbled into the hero’s way.
He absently moved me aside, out of his path, as though I were a piece of furniture. He might not have been trying to injure me, but it was like a glancing blow from a transport truck. His flesh seemed impossibly hard, the way jumping from a great height into water is the same as hitting a concrete wall once you reach a certain velocity. I felt my body buckle and give.
I was briefly airborne and landed badly. I sat, stupidly, in the middle of the floor where I’d fallen, legs splayed out, in shock.
The heat weapon sputtered out entirely. The Meat holding it threw the useless thing at Supercollider, who grimaced as it bounced off the side of his face. The Meat threw a punch and Supercollider caught his hand; he screamed as his fist was crushed. No longer worried about getting sprayed with liquid magma, Accelerator began darting around the room, disarming the other Meat. Supercollider followed behind—still holding the Meat by his jelly hand, dragging him along—parting them from their consciousness. Each of them fell bonelessly, in terrible limp heaps. Often the arrangement of their necks and limbs seemed impossible. He absently punched the Meat he held one last time, then dropped him in the pile. From my angle, I couldn’t tell if his face was swollen or caved in.
The camera crew was huddled in one corner. The man who had been working with the laptops was sobbing in long, keening gasps; the woman was silent. The camera operator tried to climb out of the broken window, but stopped when he realized how high up we were. He fell back to the floor, his hands bleeding from the glass shards clinging to the frame.
I tried to stand by myself, but my left leg collapsed under me, refusing to take my weight. It didn’t feel like it belonged to me somehow, ground beef and shattered porcelain wrapped in someone else’s skin. I stared at the offending limb, confused. There was something wrong with the angle, the familiar lines of my body warped and alien. Then, pain finally found purchase in my gut and wrenched down hard. I turned my head and puked, coffee and stomach acid.
Suddenly the room was filled with lights and noise; I started to lose track of things. The room seemed weirdly still for a moment, then I blinked and it was full of cops, pointing guns at everyone and demanding they put their hands on their heads, or get on the floor. I lifted my arms uselessly, palms open. One officer grabbed me, about to haul me to my feet, and I screamed. He took a closer look at me, and the meat of my leg gone wrong, and flinched away, releasing his grip. A second cop bent down on one knee and asked my name. Instinctively, I asked if I was being detained. She said something in reply, but I was more concerned with the vomit in my hair. I noticed the first cop wiping his hand on his leg in disgust. I asked for a tissue.
Someone started to cover the bodies with tarps.
ONCE IT WAS clear that there was no one dangerous left alive or present, the EMTs were allowed in. I screamed as they maneuvered me onto the stretcher, every little jolt of movement hammering into me like a railroad spike. One medic, a young woman with green hair, threatened to tie me down if I kept fighting them; I hadn’t realized I was resisting. I tried to keep it together. The other EMT, who had a deep tan and incredibly kind eyes, apologized. He found me a vomit bag and a couple of moist wipes for my face.
The ride in the ambulance was a wailing blur, both muffled and too bright. The friendly medic kept talking to me, trying to keep me awake, but I kept losing little bits of time. The louder the sirens became, and the more forcefully the medic spoke, the easier it became to slip away inside myself. Sliding into shock was almost comfortable, like falling asleep, only cold instead of warm.
I didn’t lose consciousness, but I did lose track of things for a long while. I knew the shock was wearing off when I got annoyed. No matter how often or how slowly the nurses or doctors explained things to me, it was incredibly difficult to retain and process any of the information. I was so tired of being confused and miserable that my brain kicked into gear again.