Blood Obsidian

Issue 19

A nest of hornets - Part 7

The look of fear and anger upon Rayna Alden's face remained in Caitlyn's mind, even as she struggled to hold on to Vezzpa. From the harness where Vezzpa's wings and stinger attached to, something else emerged. Metal attachments that rolled down Vezzpa's arms and legs and, with a surprising new strength, the villain stopped them both in their tracks. Caitlyn had tried to get Vezzpa out of the building, but the super-villain had her own ideas.

"Exo-zzkeletal zztrength enhancerzz." The lips of Vezzpa curled into a cruel smile as she curled back a hand, the attachments wrapping around her fingers as she made a fist. "Drainzz power like the dickenzz, but worth it againzzt zzomeone like you."

The punch didn't have the sheer power of the transformed Professor Halstrom, nor the brutality of Blockchain's attacks, but it struck Caitlyn hard enough to rock her, loosening her grip. As soon as Vezzpa had the chance, she ripped herself from Caitlyn's hands, taking to the air in an electronic buzz that faded as she flew back to the room where the helicopter had crashed.

Caitlyn wasn't going to let her escape. Not this time. With a single leap, she cleared the break in the wall, landing on one of the still-intact helicopter blades and looked around. There was no way Vezzpa would run without the money she had stolen, but the woman had foxed Caitlyn again. She had no intention of flying away. Not yet, at least.

Behind the wreck of the helicopter, Caitlyn saw a door closing and knew that was where Vezzpa had gone. Even knowing that, Caitlyn had to do one thing first. Leaning into the wreckage of the helicopter, she checked the pilot. Not a thorough check, but enough to know her stupidity hadn't killed the man. Her stupidity and Vezzpa's callousness and disregard for anyone else. That was about to end.

With a thought, she wondered whether the suit had other visual capabilities. She had already used the night vision more than once. If it had that, it stood to reason that it could have infrared and if it did, that would give her an advantage to find Vezzpa. Sure enough, as soon as she thought about it, the view through the mask of the suit changed and Caitlyn turned her head to find the hottest human figure she could see.

Powering those wings, the stinger and those strength enhancers would take nothing short of a miniature nuclear reactor, or something similar, and power like that would give off heat. Sure enough, up ahead, rushing past a room so cold that Caitlyn now knew what the liquid nitrogen was for, a blazing light ran through the building. That had to be her.

Except, as she reached the cold room Vezzpa had passed, she felt something strange. As though something called to her. Despite her urgency in capturing Vezzpa, Caitlyn stopped outside the cold room. Something inside there felt familiar. It felt ... trapped. Without realising it, she tried to open the door and, on finding it locked, she broke the lock and opened it anyway. Only to find something strange.

With a cold fog creeping along the floor, Caitlyn saw row upon row of tubes, each holding some kind of liquid, of varying colours, that slopped inside the tubes with sluggish movements, as though the liquid were alive. Those tubes, however, felt wrong, dirty, incomplete. The thing that had called to her sat at the other side of the room. Two things. One tube with a sliver of red in it, black in the other. These felt right. They felt clean.

Even as she reached out toward the tubes, she found her hand smashing the tubes, releasing their contents which fell upon Caitlyn's suit and became absorbed by it. They were once part of the suit she wore and were part of it again. The fact that she felt pretty certain her hand had moved without her permission bothered Caitlyn far more. That was something to think about later. Right now, her little daydream aside had given Vezzpa too great a head start. She had lost her again.