Red vs. Black

Chapter 19

Spacious as it is, there's not enough room for the immense tension that's building inside the UFO. Zayn's palms are sweating, and not from Magma (he always makes sure to let him out first because melted skin equals melted tattoos equals no powers so he's hypothesized). They're clammy from the nerves that come with trying to pull off his most ambitious attack yet.

Knobs and switches galore cover the control panel in front of Zayn's leather seat, a few screens too. On one, grainy footage of the banquet hall's main room can be seen. It's from a low perspective that Zayn knows as his monkey's.  His proof - the outline of its four-fingered hands placing one of the bombs Zayn bought off the dark web in what looks to be an air vent.

He looks up, watching through the strip of one-way glass that expands around the entire command center, Red Valor get the runaround from a fourteen year old. He's got his giant metal toothpick, yet he's spending so much time having to guess where Bolt will end up next, that he's constantly holding himself back from throwing it again.

It's no surprise that the man in the red and yellow suit showed up to foil his plans, but Zayn came prepared. All it took was picking the brains of his fellow villains about their recent encounters with the hero for him to pinpoint one vital common denominator - Red Valor requires heavy concentration to perform. Something Bolt's having no problem disrupting.

Pressing down on one of the control panel's buttons, Zayn leans forward to speak into the connected square grate, "Spark, you good?"

All of the red dots indicating the building's surge points light up once, then twice on the electrical layout spread across another one of the LCD screens.

While Zayn appreciates the response, it makes his heart skip a beat. Spark may have been able to escape jail on his own through one of the guards' radios, but he's not the most precise with his manipulation of electricity or the internet. One wrong controller channeled and he could've prematurely set off the three bombs George has already put out.

Over a separate intercom, Louis' voice patches through. "I'm showing armed police cars closing in with a ten minute radius."

Shit. There's no telling how much damage the saucer can take coming from mounted, automatic weapons. If they're going to stand any chance of not finding out, everyone involved needs to hurry it the fuck up.

Back on the street, the tables have turned. Bolt's gained ownership of the spear and tried her hand at taking off Red Valor's head with it, but the only reason she almost succeeds is because the hero's busy pulling the windscreen off a car. And from experience, that's the only thing Zayn needs to see to know it's all downhill from there.

He learned early on that despite Bolt being a valuable asset on account of her ability to hardly ever get caught, her eagerness always manages to turn into carelessness. As seen in the way she prioritizes retrieving the spear for a second chance at murder over paying attention to where she's running next - straight into the piece of glass. In the blink of an eye, a cage soars down from a close by rooftop and traps her inside, smoke coming from where the metal's been singed to the street.

"I don't have enough time for this," Zayn huffs to himself, running through his list of tattoos that could be of use.

He stops on one. It's risky, and dangerous quite frankly. Zayn's only used it once out of boredom and curiosity on a police officer riding a horse. It freaked both of them out so much, that he never touched it again. Besides, he felt it carried an element of cheating. But when the hero decked out in bright colours starts to advance towards the targeted building, Zayn has no choice but to string together the letters strewn about his upper left arm and form the phrase "Mind of Mine".