Hero Stalker

Part Seventy-Two

Frozen with shock as I was, I didn't react until a quarter-second too late.

I jumped to the left. The ball exploded open. Netting wrapped around my arms and legs, knocking me down. The metal wall rang like a drum as I slammed into it.

Amanda lifted an assault rifle off Cypher's desk. "Retract your blades or I'll shoot."

I did as she said. The hole I'd cut would barely fit my hand. Damn it. My head still spun. How could it be her?

"I'm glad the machine malfunctioned with you. You made an excellent diversion, Shadowcat." She said my name like it was the punch line of a joke. Then she flung her ruined helmet at the Wall of Fame. The glass cracked. "Slasher wasted his time trying to make you a fighter. Femme wasted her time trying to make you presentable. Only Cypher had the faintest idea someone had stolen from the team, and he thought it was you. You and Slasher freaking out over that schematic of his was the funniest thing I've seen in years. Like Cypher's the only one in the world who can use a computer. All you did was buy me time."

Cypher. I thought of him back in the square, struggling to detach his psi-meter from the weapon. God, please let him succeed. No wonder we'd never picked up Harpy's radiation signature. Peregrine had shown up at every crime scene.

My fingers fumbled for my purse remote in my belt. "You planted that schematic. You robbed the Doomsday Bunker. You shot up a fucking hospital." I'd been trying to keep my voice even, but it broke on the last one. "You're holding hundreds of people hostage. Why?"

"To punish them. I thought the skeletons might be enough. But no one really does care about homeless people. Then I killed the son of the police commissioner who never seemed to care when other people's sons got murdered. No one got it. So I blew up some doctors more concerned with their own egos then people in need. Bayton hasn't learned its lesson. Hollis thinks I'm a monster? He should look in the mirror. The world is full of men like him. With the League of Liars at my side, I can punish them all. I can deal justice. You know me. I'm ambitious." She grinned.

A light hum met my ears. Something bumped into my shoulder. "Don't act like you give a shit about justice. You hide it damn well, but you just love hurting people. I saw it when you got drunk last weekend. When you shot up the hospital. When you decided to test your machine on me, because 'all bones look alike'. How can you destroy all these lives and still live with yourself?"

For the first time, a tinge of regret flickered across her face. "Someone killed my mother. I'll never know who, because no one cared enough to investigate a murder in GreenwoodHeights. No hero showed up to save her. No cops came to take my aunt's drugs away. So when I screamed at her until her skull caved in, I already knew I wouldn't be arrested."

I scooted downward, hoping Amanda wouldn't notice what I was doing. She didn't seem to. The engines in her suit rumbled as she paced back and forth. "I didn't count on Slasher finding me as I stood over her body. But I did know exactly what to tell him. I still had the bruises from when she'd hit me. He promised he'd take the secret to his grave." Amanda chuckled. "He always kept his word."

"You won't get away with that," I growled.

"I'll admit, you're not as hapless as I once thought. But you made the same mistake Slasher did. You believed you could save society. That you could fix people. But some people are broken beyond fixing and some societies are too corrupt to be saved. They must be destroyed so that something better can take their place. I've seen how the Centurions have frustrated you. They haven't lived up to their shining public image. Of course they not. Why stay? Come with me. We've got more in common than you'd think. We were both born on the wrong side of the wall. And we both have the power to change the world."

"I'm nothing like you." Am I? Ever since I'd gotten my powers, I'd lied to my family. I'd vandalized Valerie's car and crashed Randolph's exposition, all for the thrill of harassing people who thought money made them better then me. And I couldn't forget my attempt to kill Harpy at the hospital. Maybe all Centurions killed and manipulated. Maybe Amanda had just been the best of us all. Even if I freed myself and drove my blades in her chest, I'd only replace one killer with another.

Slasher would do it in a heartbeat. But maybe he wouldn't. He'd spared her before. Besides, I wasn't him. When you put on a mask, you become a different person. And you have to choose who that person is going to be. Maybe the Centurions weren't the flawless heroes I'd once thought they were. I couldn't change them. But I could choose what kind of hero I'd be.

"I'm not a killer," I said. "Not like you."

Blades whipped from my fingertips and cut into the net. Amanda lowered her gun and fired at my head. Bullets ricocheted off my invisible purse and hit her armored chest. I heard her reel backwards, cursing. Her gun clattered on the floor.

I slashed desperately at the net, knowing I had only seconds before she'd recover the gun. It tore free. I leapt to my feet and lunged at he. On the ground, I could move a thousand times faster than her—I knew I could beat her to the gun—

But it wasn't the gun I should have worried about. Because even as my hand reached for it, Amanda screamed.

The sound wave pinned me back against the window like a bug on a card. A high-pitched noise burned in my ears. Then all sound vanished, and I still couldn't move. Amanda's wide-open mouth distorted her face. Blood ran down the side of my neck. My sight swam and my bones vibrated. It felt like an invisible knife was carving out my guts.

You'd use those powers you stole from me to run for your life. Slasher's voice ran circles around my head. Stick your blades in his chest. But I wouldn't stoop to her level. And I couldn't even breath.