Super Spy (Book 2)

21. Supervillain Duel

Tristan, Nia. They'll help me! she thought desperately. But no. She had sent them far away on other tasks. Suddenly she couldn't remember what had seemed so pressing. The forcefield closed around her mouth, her throat, like malleable plastic. Her bursts of energy did little to affect it. Sparks scattered in random directions, and the energy field slightly dimmed, but only for a moment. There was a dim roaring in Jace's ears. Stars and pinpricks swam in her field of vision.

Then the grip of the force-field loosened. Jace fell to the ground, her breath returning. A purple barrier still surrounded her, but it gave her a few inches of space to breathe. Lightheaded, Jace sucked in gasps of the murky, dusty air.

Giant shadows rose in the background behind Kara's silhouette. An illusion; random black dots and shadows still danced in front of Jace's pupils. Oxygen deprivation, she thought to herself, trying to steady her mind. That's all it is.

Screams broke through the muddled haze of her mind. The crowd, she realized with a jolt in her chest. The crowd was screaming. 

With a gasp, she hurled herself at the wall of the force-field. Her energy was almost drained, but she pulled at the last thread of it. The wall exploded in a burst of green and purple sparks, and she inhaled a lungful of gritty Smog.

Kara was running away to the edge of the building. The shadows rose up around her, and Jace realized they were giant vines. Greenish-black, thicker than a doorway, they grabbed onto the lip of the building and rose up higher. Kara leapt off the building, caught by a force-field, and disappeared into the green.

Jace looked over at the Council people and superheroes standing in the shell-shocked crowds. Grayson and all her secret agents would be standing amongst them, she knew. Hiding in plain sight. 

"Do something!" she screamed at them. They were much too far away to hear. Her frenzied, dirtied face stared back at her from one of the billboards, blood trickling from a cut on her lip she hadn't realized she had. Belatedly, she reached up to wipe away the blood. The billboards abruptly went black.

The rooftop started shaking under Jace's feet, sending her stumbling. She ran for the edge of the building, but it crumbled away as she watched: the vines had curled themselves around the railing, ripping it loose. They were doing the same to nearby buildings: snaking in through the windows, grabbing railings and ladders and balconies, ripping and tearing. 

The ground shook. Jace flailed for something to grab onto, but found nothing and fell to her knees. In the fall, she accidentally bit down on her cut lip, and a salty copper taste filled her mouth.

Through the Smog she couldn't see what was happening with the crowds or the superheroes, not without the bright light of the billboards that had gone dark, but she heard their screaming.

"Help!" she screamed, but no one heard over the screams and chaos of the crowds. She looked around wildly. The doorway she'd come in through was barred by a giant, hairy vine. Through the Smog they just looked like huge tentacles of an octopus through murky water.

The rooftop crumbling around her, Jace crawled to the edge, flat on her stomach. The railing was gone, only the terrifying void below her.Think, Jace, think, she thought desperately, but there was nowhere to go. When the vines reached her, she would plummet to her death in the lower levels.

She'd made the jump before. She'd fallen for what had felt like hours. That time, she'd had Kara and Zadia and Harrison to catch her. This time, she had no one.

A flash of light caught her attention. She blinked, thinking it was a trick of the light, but it was still there: a purple sliver floating in the air. A force-field, she thought, heart soaring with hope. It was hard to tell through the Smog, but it was her only chance. 

She scrambled to her feet just as a vine soared through the air above her head, smashing the ground behind her. The impact made her ears ring and the ground tremble beneath her, debris breaking off from the rooftop and crumbling into the void below.

Another vine slammed down on her leg. She cried out in pain, a sickening crunching sound in her ears. 

Jace dragged herself to the edge of the building and leapt. 

Her arms caught the edge of the force-field, and it deformed under her weight, the malleable material melding around her. For a terrifying second, with her heart in her throat, she and the force-field floated in mid-air, too far from the edge of the nearest building to jump onto it. Her injured leg flailed in the air.

Then a hand reached for her through the Smog.

"Jace!" A deep male voice shouted. She saw someone's blurred features through the Smog. Tristan. 

His warm hand closed around hers, and he pulled her onto the rooftop of the building.

"Are you okay?" she heard him say, though distantly, as if through several walls of glass: Her ears were still ringing.

She nodded, and then they were running. Away from the screaming crowds, away from the gold flashes and sparks of superheroes running and flying around them, away from the giant vines. They ran.