Emergence Read online

  Somehow, it was snowing. Big wonderland flakes were drifting all about, accumulating on the studio floor like something out of a Tim Burton movie. Icicles hung from the catwalks high above, and some of the cameras were iced over.

  Sitting at the news desk was Bombero in his red hoodie. He seemed greatly interested in the woman across from him, a platinum blonde woman a bit past her prime but holding onto her sex appeal with both hands and a lot of collagen.

  She was all athletic, contoured figure skater’s legs disappearing up into a lustrous white fur parka and ample cleavage pushing against the zipper of a tight white designer ski jacket. There was a pair of white Eskimo glasses halfway down her custom made nose, and she was fluttering long eyelashes at Bombero, who was rubbing her proffered hand between his.

  They were both of them whispering and giggling when the doors opened, and a small cloud of steam was billowing off their hands, which they retracted at the appearance of the car.

  Pan recognized her right off. She was something of a local celebrity.

  ‘Sunny’ Sonya Billings. She’d been Vulpes’ signature buxom blonde weather woman and beloved local party ditz for eight or nine years when the decision had come down from the station head that she was to be replaced by a younger, prettier, more Asian meteorologist.

  On the night of what was to be her last broadcast she’d refused to end her segment, and forced her way in front of the cameras of the neighboring news desk, imploring her loyal fans to call into the station and demand her contract be renewed. They’d cut to commercial while Vulpes security came to escort her out.

  Except the producer that night had decided Sonya was still newsworthy and trained every lens in the house on her in her most undignified, shrill, and mascara-runny moment, right up until she was bodily cast into the parking lot and the doors pulled shut and locked behind her.

  The next night she had reappeared at a Vulpes-sponsored press party dressed much as she was now, and displaying a remarkable and heretofore unknown ability to produce and control ice. She’d frozen that producer into a chocolate fountain and then broke him into pieces with one blow of an icepick.

  “Hey, LF!” she’d smiled prettily into a rolling news camera that had captured the whole thing live. “Typical suntanned Californian beach bum bastards, you took old Sunny Sonya for granted, so the forecast from here on out is cold! Compliments of your friendly, frigid Snow Bunny!”

  She’d gone on to murder four more anchormen and station executives, robbed a couple of jewelry stores, and assaulted sixteen Vulpes News reporters on the street with the help of a cadre of diehard Muscle Beach lunatics from her old fan club dressed in neon ski suits (she called them her Powder Hounds) before A-Frame had finally battled her and her gang to a standstill and the P.O.N.E squad had taken her down.

  He hadn’t heard she’d escaped from Fulcrum Prison.

  Then he noticed Aisha Cordell.

  She was frozen to the Hillywood backdrop between them, her entire body encased in thick ice, her face wan and pale, teeth chattering. She didn’t look good.

  He didn’t see Tink anywhere, but he spied the place he’d been tied in the video; the severed telephone cords still hanging from the column.

  “Olle, Relampago!” Bombero said, standing up. “You got him, eh?” He jumped up on the news desk. “Bring that little puta over here.”

  Margarito leaned down and grabbed Pan by the collar of his costume and began to pull him along.

  “Oh-my-Gawd, he really is a little kid!” said Snow Bunny, pushing her slitted glasses up her nose. She had this nasal accent that had been charming for years but had finally run its course.

  “That ain’t what I heard,” said Bombero, leaning over to look down on Pan, and winking as he did so.

  “Now what?” said Margarito, depositing Pan on the floor.

  “Yo, now we do the broadcast, make our demands, wait for word from the Man that La Luz has been released. Once he is, we fly outta here in the helicopter with my baby Snow Bunny here at the stick.”

  He looked back at Snow Bunny and winked again.

  She held up a finger.

  “Ah, after my Powder Hounds get sprung too, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And then when we take off we blow the building, right?”

  “That’s right, baby.”

  “Blow the building?” Margarito repeated. “Who said we were doin’ that?”

  “Yo, it was need to know. Now, since you got him, you need to know,” Bombero chuckled. “The Man’s gonna collect him, then we blow the building to cover our escape. Also, so nobody asks what happened to him.”

  “Good riddance,” Snow Bunny muttered.

  “This place is wired to blow up…and we had a bunch of kids downstairs?” Margarito exclaimed.

  Snow Bunny curled her lip and filed her ice blue nails.

  “Relax, man. Nothin’ was gonna happen,” Bombero said, laying a hand on Margarito’s shoulder.

  Margarito slapped it away, beginning to pace like a zoo tiger in his outrage.

  “Fuck, man! Why didn’t you tell me that? What if he’d kicked my ass like he did Inundación and Rapido?”

  “Yo, where is Rapido?”

  “Answer me, man. What would’ve happened? Would you have blown the place without getting them kids out?”

  Bombero rubbed his nose and looked at Snow Bunny.

  “Yo, would you stick this little maricon up on the wall next to that other puta? I want him in the background when we roll camera.”

  Snow Bunny sighed and rose from her chair, adjusted the zipper on her jacket, and came crunching over the snow-covered floor in her white moon boots, slipping a pair of white mink mittens over her hands.

  “You’ll have to pick him up and hold him up there. I don’t wanna crack a nail.”

  “Yo, do it, Relampago,” said Bombero.

  “Fuck that, man. I wanna know the whole plan, or I ain’t doing another thing.”

  “I wouldn’t’ve blown this place up. Man, I can’t even do it.””

  “What do you mean you can’t even do it?”

  “Hook’s got the trigger, not me. I just delivered the thing.”

  “Hook? Who the fuck is…?” Margarito began. “You mean we’re standing in this place and some other motherfucker’s got his finger on the button? Are you fucking stupid?”

  “The fuck you say to me, homes?” Bombero said, getting off the table and coming over, getting in Margarito’s face as Snow Bunny backed away, carefully stenciled eyebrows raised.

  “Do you even know what kinda person you’re dealing with here?” Margarito insisted.

  But Bombero was fixated on the insult. “You think I’m stupid?”

  “Shit. Are you? Who the fuck is this Hook pinche? And how come he had you runnin’ around with that puta Zita Cariño?”

  “Yo, that’s my business, homes. Who the fuck told you about that?”

  “Man, don’t worry about that. Is it true?”

  “Hey, I’mma do whatever to get La Luz out the stir. WG, yo. That’s whassup. Are you down for us or what?”

  Margarito chewed his lip and stared into Bombero’s scowling face for a minute. He shook his head. “There’s some things you don’t fuckin’ do. Babies, man? Babies?”

  “Man, whatever,” said Bombero, and he stooped down and hefted Pan up over his shoulder.

  “WHAT’S THE HOLD UP, PEOPLE? YOU SHOULD BE LIVE IN FIVE,” came Hook’s voice over the PA.

  “Work that camera, Relampago, like we showed you,” said Bombero. And he turned to carry Pan to the wall where Aisha Cordell was freezing to death.

  “You got the script, baby?” Bombero said to Snow Bunny.

  “Right here, baby,” she purred, taking a folded piece of paper from the pocket of her parka.

  “Well, situate your fine ass back down behind that desk where you belong and let’s kick this shit off.”

  “Don’
t turn your motherfuckin’ back on me, mang!” Margarito yelled.

  Bombero didn’t have time to correct his behavior before the crackling blast of lightning burst from Margarito’s hands, struck him in the shoulder, and spun him around, flinging Pan to the floor a few feet away, where he skidded across the hard ice and lay shivering.

  Bombero cursed and retorted with a ball of flame from his left hand that Margarito ducked. It struck the television camera behind him and blew it to pieces.

  “What the fuck!” Snow Bunny yelled, flinging off her mittens. She retaliated with a shimmering streak of ice from her open palm that shot across the floor, climbed halfway up Margarito’s right leg, and flowed past him.

  Margarito screamed and clutched his frozen leg.

  Snow Bunny clicked the heels of her boots together and a pair of skate blades descended. She put her legs to use and skated quickly past Margarito, sparing him a roller derby elbow that knocked him back.

  His flash frozen leg remained where it was though, and with a sickening crunch, broke off at the knee and remained standing there like an unfinished ice sculpture while he landed flat on his back, wailing.

  She did a graceful pirouette and stopped a few feet from where Pan lay, willing himself to roll over, forcing himself to push up to his hands and knees.

  Bombero stared aghast at Margarito rolling in agony on the floor, and wheeled on Snow Bunny.

  “Bitch! What the fuck did you do to him?”

  He raised his arms and directed a miniature comet of blue and yellow fire in her direction.

  She was surprised, but to her credit, not that surprised, and managed to throw up her hands and solidify a wall of ice in front of her that was quickly reduced to a splash of water…which left her dripping wet.

  “You son of a bitch!” she squealed, and threw up both hands, spewing forth twin snow blower streams of hard ice from her palms.

  Bombero clasped his hands before him and met the spray of ice and snow with a concentrated stream of twisting flame.

  The effect was spectacular, a cataclysmic, elemental contention of fire and ice that filled the studio with steam and turned the ice-covered floor to slush and bathwater as the two combatants roared at each other.

  Pan got to his feet and wobbled over to Margarito, writhing in the lapping, slushy water now covering the floor.

  “Hold on to me!” he hissed in the man’s ear.

  Margarito feebly encircled Pan’s thin neck with his arms.

  Pan pushed off and rose quickly to the ceiling, using the cloud of steam as cover. They lit upon a utility catwalk above. He set Margarito down and leaned against the railing, then spied a set of sandbags tied to an adjoining catwalk overlooking Bombero. He stumbled over to them, took out his knife, and sawed at the ropes.

  Below, Bombero was unleashing a torrent of angry Spanish to accompany his flame projection.

  Snow Bunny wasn’t giving in, either.

  “You dumbass wetback! Who the hell do you think you are?”

  Pan parted the rope, and the sandbag plummeted to the stage floor. It didn’t quite land on Bombero’s head and compress his spine like he’d hoped, but glanced off his shoulder, hard enough to make him falter.

  Distracted, one of Snow Bunny’s ice chunks struck him in the jaw and bowled him over the news desk, where he lay senseless.

  “Who’s the bitch now, bitch?” Snow Bunny declared triumphantly, dropping her barrage of ice and snow and planting her hands on her hips.

  “Relampago!” Pan called.

  Margarito had been rolling back and forth on the other catwalk, bleeding, but he nodded and pointed down at Snow Bunny’s feet.

  A miniature bolt of lightning ran from his fingertip down to the water covered floor and with a brilliant flash and the explosion of several studio lights, Snow Bunny went rigid and then fell with a splash into the water.

  Pan glanced up, and noticed the ever-present security cameras. The red lights indicating their functionality were dim.

  Pan came over, gathered Maragarito in his arms, and leapt to the floor with a splash.

  “How are you doing?”

  “My leg, man.”

  “You’ll be downstairs in five minutes. What about my friend? Where is he?”

  “Roof,” moaned Margarito.

  “Anybody else up there?”

  “Nobody else.”

  Pan opened the elevator car door and propped Margarito inside, then flew across the room and checked on Cordell.

  She was delirious, pupils dilated. Hypothermia maybe.

  He chipped at the ice with his knife until she fell forward over his shoulder, then he flew across the studio and deposited her next to Margarito.

  “She’s freezing. Keep her warm.”

  “Ought to let this bitch die,” Margarito whispered weakly.

  “Do that and she wins.”

  “WELL, THAT’S DISAPPOINTING. IF YOU WANT SLIGHTLY, HE’S DOWN HERE WITH ME IN THE SECURITY ROOM, PAN. THIRTIETH FLOOR. I’LL BE WAITING.”

  Pan frowned at the sound of Hook’s voice and looked at Margarito.

  Margarito shook his head.

  Tink was on the roof, Margarito had said. Margarito wouldn’t lie. But was he sure? He hadn’t known about the bomb. Had Bombero moved him? Was Hook really down there waiting?

  Somehow, it didn’t seem likely.

  “He controls the elevator, man,” Margarito said weakly.

  “Not for long.”

  Pan pressed the first floor and stepped out of the car.

  Margarito raised his thumb as the doors closed.

  “WHERE ARE YOU…?”

  Pan went back to Bombero and slapped him awake.

  His jaw looked to be broken and he blinked blearily as he came to.

  “Where’s the bomb you delivered?”

  “Sek-yoorty,” Bombero muttered through clenched teeth. “N’thirty.”” Then his eyes widened and he began to stir, but Pan drove his elbow between his eyes and bounced his head off the desk and he lay still again. If they were all going to die, Bombero wasn’t going to be the one to get out.

  Pan went back to the elevator and pried the doors open again, looking down the shaft. The car was still descending. Hook wasn’t bothering with it. He was checking building cameras, trying to figure out where he was going.

  Pan turned and lifted up Snow Bunny.

  She moaned in his arms.

  He shook her. “Hey! Hey, wake up!”

  Her long, spider leg lashes fluttered open and her blue eyes widened in wonder as Pan stepped into the empty shaft and dropped.

  Her scream echoed off the walls as they fell.

  SEVENTEEN

  Pan stopped their rapid descent at the thirtieth floor, which he judged by the large utility numbers marked on the walls of the dark shaft.

  Below them, the elevator continued to descend.

  “Oh-my-Gawd! Are you fucking nuts?” Snow Bunny exclaimed, hugging close to him.

  “Sorry. I need you awake,” said Pan. “Hold on.”

  He shifted her to his back, where she scrabbled and squealed like a terrified cat and nearly pulled his cowl down over his face in her desperation to get a safe and solid hold on him.

  He floated forward and pried the doors open.

  They had only seconds.

  He had avoided Hook’s cameras in the elevator. He had to know he was proceeding where he’d been invited, but the cameras in the studio had been knocked out and there were none in the shaft. Maybe he was paying close attention to the cameras, waiting for him to leave the studio.

  He flew down the hall with Snow Bunny on his back. She shrieked at the speed. He was going as fast as he could with her added weight. It wasn’t top speed. He had never clocked himself. But it was all he had.

  The door marked Security Office was at the end of the hall. He blew through it feet first, smashing the thick wooden door to pieces.

  The security hu
b was the kind you saw in movies: a control room with banks of cameras, a chair in the center. In the chair sat not a man, but some kind of squat, heavy metallic device, wires springing from its casing like the hairs on a madman’s head and a single orange light blinking in the center like an eye. He didn’t know anything about bombs. This didn’t look big enough to demolish the building, unless it was some kind of nuclear warhead. He didn’t see that yellow and black nuke symbol anywhere, like on the plutonium cases in Back to the Future. Did they really put something like that on a nuke?

  “Freeze it!” he yelled, shrugging off Snow Bunny so she dropped down behind him. “Do it now! Cold as you can!”

  And he ducked behind her.

  “Oh my gosh!” she whined.

  At the sight of the ominous looking contraption, she didn’t hesitate but splayed her fingers and thrust out her arms.

  A cone of white mist billowed from her hands and the temperature in the room dropped by degrees. An icy wind kicked up, some kind of back blast of her powers. Her coat flew behind her, her parka hood fell, and her platinum hair streamed back. Pan clutched one of her shapely legs and gritted his teeth against the cold.

  The bomb, if a bomb it was, iced over. The chair on which it sat frosted, and the console behind turned white.

  Snow Bunny kept it up for a good minute and a half.

  The camera screens winked out two at a time and soon the whole console was dead.

  The orange light on the bomb continued to wink behind the layers of ice, but it slowed, then it dimmed, and then it stopped.

  Finally, she lowered her arms and swooned against him, utterly exhausted.

  “Nice job,” he said, standing up, assuming a more dignified position.

  There was a crackle and a tremendous crash as the chair, frozen solid, broke apart under the weight of the bomb and it fell heavily to the floor.

  Snow Bunny shrieked and jumped totally into his arms.