***FIONNA***
How much time until that bomb goes off?
How much time until we lose Russell?
Park can't even look at the tablet to keep track of the video, he's too busy running with the rest of us. Our goal - find out which building Russell's being held in. But which one could it be? And what if we're in it when the jewel bomb goes off? I haven't seen an ultralight blast in person - and I imagine an explosion of pure sangrite would resemble that, especially if sangrite fuels these things - but I saw the mushroom cloud on TV once. It looks every bit as scary as any Prime 'Verse nuke. Ever seen how the angels and humans ended World War II? Yeah.
We only stop when we reach the lobby of this building, on the ground floor. Park stops by the front desk, across the room from a gently trickling fountain, and consults the screen. There, we see Russell scrambling to get the bloody sangrite out of the interrogation room by any means necessary. Specifically, by smashing open an air vent, laying the sangrite inside, and pushing it away in a gale-force rush of dark energy.
Which works for a second. Then the vent spits the jewel right back at him.
"Turning on the negative pressure, Penner? I see what you're doing there!" Russell moves away from the vent and stands under the camera, pounding away with a dark spike at what I'm guessing is the door. It almost works, but then electricity sparks through the door, melting the spike in Russell's hands and even shocking him. "Ever heard of 'agree to disagree?' Apparently not!"
I tug on Park's shirtsleeve to get his attention. "What building would he be in? Guardian headquarters?" The blood drains from my head at the very thought - that's the same building where Kensi and I live. Where Gabe and Harris live. It's not official like this TAD building clearly is - it's only Guardian headquarters, I think, because it's also where Russell lives.
And Harlan.
Is Harlan in there right now? In his lab, tinkering at more prototype wingsuits in a haze of marijuana smoke? Can we get him out too?
"We can't get him out if we're just standing around!" Kensi grabs my arm. "Come on, we gotta get outta here!"
But just as we take another step, the door in front of us opens and in walks Penner, casually whistling what sounds like the Jeopardy! theme.
"Yo! Green Goblin!" Gabe's the first to run up to Penner, summoning water from the fountain and getting ready to use it. "What'd you do that to Russell for, huh?"
"Don't act so ungrateful. I've just opened up more opportunities for all you kids now that you won't be stuck under Russell's thumb anymore."
"Hey Penner!" I'm not sure if Russell can hear him from his end, but he's got a few good words left in him. "Don't worry, I'll say hi to your boss when I meet him!"
Penner ignores Russell's jibe completely. "If I were you, I'd duck in about three...two...one."
There isn't much of a view of the outside in this lobby - concrete block of a building, remember? - but the door is all glass, and not tintable, I guess. Because the second Penner stops talking, pure white light pierces through it, like a sunrise ten feet away.
I know I'm not the only one screaming in fear and hitting the deck.
Right when I go down and cover my head, I feel a soft rumble through the floor. Soft, then growing stronger with each nanosecond.
It takes only about five seconds before we hear the explosion too. Even with my ears covered, I'm deafened.
If I could look up, I could see how much shit is raining down on me right now. Not literal shit, of course, but I know there's bits of plaster from the ceiling raining down. And maybe some bigger bits of heavier stuff.
There's more screaming all around me. Who's getting hurt? I look up and all around, trying to get split-second glimpses of my friends. Gabe, Jay, and Ariel are struggling to get to their feet. Park scrambles out from underneath the front desk, swearing furiously as he gazes at the tablet's screen.
"I'll take that," Penner says. "Not nice to take what's not yours, Dominic." As he grabs the tablet, I see static all over the screen, like the video connection's been severed.
Wait a second.
"Kensi?" I stand up, my legs wobbling. "Kensi? Kensi! Where are you?"
"Fionna! Over here!" Jesus, she sounds like she's in pain - and when I move from the spot where I hit the floor, I see why. She was unlucky enough to hit the floor on a spot where a steel I-beam came down.
The beam hasn't touched her, thank God, but she's hurt anyway. Her arm's folded under her torso, and I'm pretty damn sure it's broken. I spare a moment to cover my mouth, gasping in horror from imagining the sight of her arm bending in a way it shouldn't. And so she doesn't hear me hyperventilating, even though she probably can't because she's hyperventilating herself.
"Kensi...?"
"Help me." She tries to sit up and relieve some of the pressure of her own weight on her arm, but she can't do it without crying out.
"I got you, I got you..." Half-blinded by tears, I grab her good arm, bend my knees, and pull her up. She bites her lip, struggling to keep in a scream, but she stands up on her own. Then she pulls away from me so she can cradle her broken arm. "H-How bad is it?"
"At least my bones aren't sticking out."
"Which ones are broken? Both bones?" I snap my fingers, trying to recall freshman-year health class. "Radius? Ulna?"
"Yeah. Both."
I'd hug her, but I'm afraid I'd hurt her more. So I lay my arm over her shoulder and call out to the room at large, "Anyone else hurt?"
Everyone else says "No!"
Everyone except Penner, who's been standing idly by the whole time, curiously unfazed by everything around him.
Including the long shards of what look like frosted, textured Plexiglas from the remains of the ceiling panels that used to filter the overhead lights.
Shards which stick out of his collarbone, blood pooling around the points where they're embedded in his body.
"Uh...Kensi? I thought you were the one who got hurt. So why am I hallucinating?"
She blinks a couple of times. "No, no, I see it...I see it too."
Penner finally figures out what's wrong. He looks down at the shards, but his expression doesn't change. Not even for a second. All he does is pull the shards out, looking as nonchalant as when he walked in. Minus the whistling, and thank God, because that would just be too creepy for words. Not that he's not creepy enough.
I swear to God, Penner's not a living thing. He must be a robot.
A bloody Terminator.
I expect to see vintage-1991 CGI liquid metal healing his wounds any second now. No such luck, though. Unless he's not inclined to show off his secret powers?
"How could you?" It's Park, and he's almost lost his voice. He sounds like he's spent hours screaming himself hoarse.
Penner lays the shards on the front desk. "Here's the thing. We could never convince Russell to stand back and let us do our work. Work which Ariel here was now interfering with - I, for one, suspect he was in contact with Russell all along."
"I wasn't."
"I believe you, but now that Russell's dead, it's immaterial. He can't defend you anymore, Ariel. Peppermint will make you pay. And not with your life. Perhaps with your son's?"
I don't blame Ariel for rushing at Penner. If not for Gabe and Jay running in and holding him back, he'd probably punch the guy's lights out - not that Penner would notice, I'm sure. Hell, we could probably outright tear Penner's head off, and he'd keep on mouthing off at us like the disturbing milquetoast knockoff of Deadpool he is.
"You say 'Peppermint' like you're not part of them." I look over to Kensi again - she's pale as death and her eyes are closed. "Are they forcing you to work with them, Penner?"
He looks genuinely surprised by my question. "What are you getting at?"
"Just...okay, you've just killed a man. But...but maybe they're somehow forcing you to do it?"
The way Penner's eyes twitch, I think I'm right on the money. With uncharacteristic brusqueness, he says, "Get to the point."
"Whatever Peppermint has on you, they can't completely deprive you of your decency. Look, see, Kensi needs to get this looked at. Hell, we could all do with-"
"No."
Jay rolls his eyes. "Can we do something about this guy? What's his deal, anyway?"
That is the million-dollar question...and now I think about it, I have the feeling I know what the answer might be. "Peppermint controls your mind, don't they?"
Penner reaches for his wrists, right where those tiny green dots are.
"That's it, isn't it?" Gabe nods at him. "Those marks, they're how Peppermint brands you. But...how?"
For a moment, I thought we were getting through to Penner. But then his eyes turn iron-cold again, he crosses his arms, and swallows once, twice, three times. "As they so very often say, I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you. Oh well. I'll compromise and give you just a smidge of information. I'm sure you're aware that for every Primer, there's a Second 'Verse body just waiting to be activated at the moment of death? Those are kept in tanks at the Terminal. Peppermint-built tanks, so they know how to work them. Including how to get in and modify the bodies within.
"Where do you think all these dual-powered Second 'Verse denizens are coming from?"
Penner stands dead center between us all, surveying us calmly as we all take in the news.
Gabe's the first to react, and he does so with abject horror. He lets go of Ariel and steps forward, fighting to un-drop his jaw. He's doing a better job of that than the rest of us. "Are you telling me...I've been dating a Peppermint agent for the last three months?"
"Hmm. Judging from how horrified you are, you must've had no inkling whatsoever. Which means you probably didn't activate Harris by mistake, then. Good. Good."
"What, would I have had to say the right combo of words from your Soviet spy ledger?" Gabe scoffs. "'Lodging, Freight car, Homecoming, Mission Report, December 16, 1991' and all that shit?"
"Marvel made their version of the process unnecessarily complicated," Penner says. At least he gets the reference, not that it makes him a better person. Even villains can be geeks, I guess. Syndrome, anyone? Seriously, he even looks a little like Syndrome, if Syndrome had gone on a diet and actually had powers, not just techno toys. "The good news is, the one word it would have taken to activate Harris, it's not one that's likely to come up in conversation. Or pillow talk-"
"Hey, only my friends get to pretend Harris and I were having sex!"
Penner looks confused. "You weren't?"
"Lemme give it to you in mathematical terms, 'cause that's a universal language and all. Gay dude + bi dude does not necessarily = sexual relationship." He slumps his shoulders. "Not yet. Give us time."
"If you can find and use the Black Mirror again, then I will." Not even an apology for his microaggression. Sounds about typical for this guy. "But until then...are you sure you never accidentally activated him? You've never even played chess with him once?"
Kensi taps my shoulder. I lean over and hear her think, Jay's got dual powers too.
What?
Yeah, you wouldn't know, 'cause you don't remember him...he's got dark and water powers.
I let go of her and charge into the center of the room. "Get away from him!" I scream, pointing at Jay. "Everyone stay away from him!" As Gabe, Park, and Ariel yell over each other, demanding to know what I'm talking about, I keep pointing at Jay and saying, "He's got dual powers! He's one of them!"
Park's head swivels towards Jay, then he grabs his wrists roughly and pulls his sleeves up. "He's got marks," he says. "Blue, though. Not green."
"What? No! No, I'm not...that's not true!" Jay snatches his hands back and looks at his wrists himself. "I don't have those marks! He's lying!"
"Of course you'd think that, Jason," Penner says. "One of the modifications to your Second 'Verse body that they gave you in the tank is that the marks are invisible to you. It's easier to screw with your vision like that 'cause you were a Dark warlock as a human. That gives you a slightly different spectrum of vision. Ultraviolet light looks opaque to you, right? The tattoos are double-layered - the first layer is color that anyone can see, but the second layer, the top layer, is ultraviolet. Invisible to everyone, but to your Dark-warlock eyes, it effectively masks the color underneath."
"No..." Jay's eyes dart around behind his glasses. "No, I'm not one of you! I'm not! You can't control me!"
"Don't be so sure...rook."
As soon as Penner stops talking, Jay stops protesting. He stands ramrod straight, looking extremely ready to comply.
Now Penner smiles. "Rook...kill."
Jay turns to the nearest person - Park - and raises his fist. Immediately, Park gets ready to defend himself, light springing out of both hands. He crosses the twin light blades in front of his chest to guard himself against any attack.
But the light blades, usually so solid, soon fail in the face of three deadly ice spikes. Everyone screams, including Park...but the spikes don't penetrate Park's body. They stop about halfway between the remains of his light blades and his chest.
Park looks down, horrified, but quickly recovers his senses and regenerates one light blade, severing the ice spikes with it. He ducks and rolls around Jay, who tries to regrow the spikes with another hand, but I step in with my fire to melt them.
At least, I try to.
Those ice blades are so cold I can feel it from here. How cold? No way they could be absolute zero or something, but they're colder than anything I've ever felt before.
But that's where Park and his light blades are for. Hell, even Kensi, who can barely fight with her broken arm, gets in on the game, sending up small sparks of lightning more as a distraction than anything else. And, for good measure, Gabe summons some water from the wrecked fountain, freezes it, and ropes it around Jay's waist.
Jay hits his knees just in time for Ariel to jump into the fray as well, ready to black-bag his head. Is it just me, or is he surrendering to us?
Penner sighs heavily. "I guess you were almost right, Rook. Controlling you would be difficult, if not outright impossible. I told them adolescent brains were ill-suited for this kind of work. Oh well. I don't need you to do this anyway." He clears his throat. "Rook...stand down."
Jay blinks. "What's happening? What...no. No, he didn't-"
Penner's left hand crackles with lightning. He raises his right hand and fires a spinning torrent of wind, with the lightning filling that same current.
The whole thing picks up Park and throws him bodily across the room until he smashes into the wall above the elevator door.
He crumples on impact and falls to the floor headfirst, still smoking and sparking from his electrocution.
"Shame," Penner muses. "He was a good Temporal Activity agent. But he would've only gotten in Peppermint's way. Rest in peace, Dominic." He snaps a mocking salute, then turns on his heel and heads for the door.
As if we're going to just let him leave. Not after two cold-blooded murders.
I'm the first to strike, raining down tons of holy hellfire, but nowhere near as much as he deserves.