Taking charge, Alpha Prime stepped forward and stated, “Okay, tell me what happened.”
The statement wasn’t directed at anyone in particular, but Luna took the lead, saying, “Mouse showed up, that’s what happened. We were incorporating some new weaponry into the training arsenal when he kicked open the door and came striding in with something like a grenade launcher. Next thing you know, he was firing it at us.”
“That’s crazy,” I insisted. “Why would he do that?”
“Because – just like in his lab – whatever the Construct did has unhinged him somehow,” Luna declared. “You seem to have trouble accepting that.”
“Did he say anything?” I asked, ignoring her disdainful commentary.
Luna nodded. “Yeah – he said he would destroy us all. Does that count?”
There was silence for a moment as Luna’s words (sans sarcastic remarks) sank in. Of course, I still had trouble with what I was hearing. That said, maybe the Construct had done something to Mouse – infected him in some way so that, like a person delirious with fever, he was acting in a manner that was inconsistent with his personality.
“So what happened after he shot at you?” Electra asked.
“You mean aside from me ending up in the blast radius of a grenade?” Luna quipped. “I suppose I was knocked off my feet.”
“I believe she was asking what happened to Mouse,” my father explained.
“He took off,” Luna said. “By the time I got back up and went after him, he was gone.”
“There are cameras all through this part of the building,” I noted. “They film us during training exercises and show the video to us later so we can see what we did wrong.”
“What’s your point?” Luna inquired.
“I think Jim’s trying to suggest that the cameras might tell where Mouse went,” Alpha Prime chimed in.
Luna was silent for a second, then declared, “We already thought of that. The cameras apparently shut down when Mouse came after us, so there’s no footage.”
“Presumably that was Mouse’s doing,” Electra said.
Luna nodded in agreement. “That was our thought as well.”
“So why here?” I asked. “Out of all the places at HQ, why would he stage an attack here?”
“I’m not sure anyone can answer that,” Electra replied. “If Mouse really is unstable, there may not be any logic behind what he does or why.”
“No,” I shot back, shaking my head. “Even half-crazed, I can’t imagine Mouse taking action like this without a reason, no matter how far-fetched.”
Luna gave me a harsh look. “Maybe you should–”
Her words were cut off as the entire chamber shook momentarily with tremors, accompanied by a hollow booming sound. Almost immediately thereafter, klaxons began sounding in alarm, along with flashing lights.
Despite the room shaking, everyone present managed to stay on their feet, but we all knew exactly what we’d experienced: an explosion.
Chapter 31
Alpha Prime tapped his communicator and shouted over the sound of the alarm, “Talk to me!”
His face grew stern as he listened to whatever report he was receiving. On my part, I instinctively reflected on the explosion.
The blast wave from an explosion travels faster than the accompanying sound wave. However, the tremors and sound of the explosion had practically been simultaneous. In addition, I noted that the building wasn’t falling down around us. Taking those facts together, I came to the immediate conclusion that the explosion was nearby, but hadn’t been large.
“Mouse just attacked us!” my father yelled after a few seconds.
“He’s back?” I exclaimed.
“Yeah, back,” Alpha Prime confirmed in a wavering tone as the alarms suddenly cut off. Obviously a second assault so close to the first wasn’t anything he’d contemplated.
“Where?” asked Luna.
“The Vault,” Alpha Prime stated.
However, the words were barely out of his mouth before Luna and the League members who’d been with her took off – apparently headed to the area in question. Electra and I didn’t move; instead, we simply looked to Alpha Prime for direction.
As the name implied, the Vault was a secure area (one of several, in fact) on the premises of Alpha League Headquarters. It was used to store numerous items of value, but also housed a diverse collection of paraphernalia seized from supervillains over the years: doomsday devices, weapons of mass destruction, and so on. Bearing that in mind, the Vault was generally off-limits to members of the League’s teen affiliate. Thus, I had never been inside the place. That said, I had been outside it before.
“Jim,” my father said, getting my attention.
Knowing what he wanted without asking, I teleported us.
The three of us popped up outside a massive blast door that was about ten-by-ten feet in size. In fact, the door formed the wall at the end of a short corridor that was about thirty feet long. There were normally a couple of guards on duty outside, but at present they weren’t at their post and the blast door – which was the entry to the Vault – was currently open.
My father literally flew into action, leaving his feet and flying forward at what was probably just under Mach speed. I shifted into super speed in order to keep up with him and followed. (Electra, of course, didn’t have the ability to move faster than normal, but them’s the breaks.)
We dashed inside, and I noted in passing that, just like an old-fashioned bank vault, the blast door appeared to be more than a foot thick and made of some sort of hardened steel. Once on the other side, however, I experienced a momentary sense of déjà vu: the inside of the Vault was almost a duplicate of the exterior, with a short hallway that terminated in a wall-sized blast door that was currently ajar. It took me a second to realize and understand that we were not in the Vault proper yet, and there were apparently two doors (at a minimum) that one had to get past in order to get there.
While I was processing this information, my father had never stopped moving; I stayed right on his heels, noting in the back of my
