#HeroFail by Dunne Lexie

Author:Dunne, Lexie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper Voyager Impulse
Published: 2018-11-27T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

The perfume trail led me straight to a wall. Since the wall lacked any supervillain-shaped holes, that meant only one thing: a hidden door. Jessie hadn’t mentioned any to me, but the woman took paranoid to the next level. I applied my detective skills to look for a catch. When those proved absolutely worthless, I used my actual skills.

Or rather: I punched a hole in the wall.

Unsurprisingly, it led me to a secret tunnel on the other side of the hallway. Great. A secret lair. As a principle, I hated secret lairs. They’d been the bane of my existence for four years: a villain tying me up on the top of the Wrigley Building? Fine. That was public, I could expect a reasonably quick rescue. But secret lairs gummed up the works with unnecessary time constraints and extra stress. The necessity of having my own secret base bothered me, but I accepted it as a necessary evil. Discovering that it went one level deeper only made me grumpier as I stuck my whole arm through the wall and ripped downward.

Mercifully, my height or lack thereof meant I didn’t need too big of a hole. I doubled back to collect my armor from the kitchen and squeezed through. I landed in an awkward pile on steps that smelled of musty wood and dust.

They creaked under my weight. Not so great for stealth, unfortunately.

Still following Rita’s perfume, I crept down, on alert for any traps. Nothing tried to electrocute me, so I counted that as a win in my favor. My heart hammered hard in my chest. Actively tracking Rita on my own went beyond stupid, straight into the suicidal.

The stairs took me down several flights. I felt nearby subway trains rumble past, the vibrations traveling through the soles in my boots. My face mask scanned my surroundings for structural weak points and traps. The sensors detected nothing, though a change in the ambient sound ahead told me that I was approaching a large, open area. I could hear people inside.

The stairs ended in a small hallway. To one side, I found an alcove: a coat closet, complete with a few moth-eaten garments. I slipped inside to silence my cell phone, not wanting a repeat of my attempt to sneak up on Chessmeister that one time. Satisfied it wouldn’t give me away, I continued to slink along. The hallway led to a giant cavern. A small set of steps at the end of the hall finished out the path into the cavern, which was set a few feet below the hallway. I crept to the opening and peeked inside.

The 1960s stared back at me.

Gigantic computer server banks filled the center of the warehouse-like space, neatly regimented into rows like obedient soldiers. Fluorescent lights flickered in their enormous ballasts, washing everything in a horrific office building glow. The wall directly across from me, all the way on the other side of the room, was covered in CRT monitors.

This must be the Raptor’s original secret base, I realized.

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