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Mitchell was outside in moments, Breakneck looking for anyone who could take him off her hands.
There we go.A cop had just slammed his cruiser door shut, hand still outstretched as Breakneck closed the gap. With the world still in slow motion his startled jump was extra comical, the Noble ignoring his snail’s pace shock as she set the victim down.
“Heart attack. Stay here.”Back inside and through the halls faster than sound itself, shifting her way through more stragglers pushing towards the exit. Breakneck kept an eye on the walls as she ran past useless fire alarms and extinguishers, the blaze far too large to be simply choked out by foam. What she needed was a defibrillator, and she found it by the first-floor women’s restroom.
There was no need to bother with a handle, the stainless steel case simply wrenched open and the AED within pulled free. It was pressed into the cop’s hand within the same second, Breakneck spinning on her heels before he even processed her reappearance.
He’d figure it out, she still had work to do.
A speed of sound search told her that the first floor was devoid of anyone unable to help themselves so she moved on, simply jumping from the ground to the mezzanine above. Pushing her way through the last few people trying to get out she saw another Variant, bright blue and orange uniform standing out from the crowd.
She’d didn’t recognize him as anything more than the boy he was, a kid playing hero because he didn’t know any better. Her lips were a thin line behind the opaque visor of her helmet, Breakneck watching the child disappear onto the final floor.
The second floor was Records, a tempting target indeed. There were data stacks to poke at, filing cabinets to dig through, papers not yet consumed by the blaze, all sorts of secrets hidden away by Imperial Bioengineering. Ignoble would have quite literally killed to get their hands on them, and Breakneck was more than willing to peruse.
But the kid was out of depth somewhere within the building. Information could wait, he couldn’t.
She found him only moments later, his breathing uncomfortably ragged.
“You need to leave!”She had to shout over the roar of the fire, gripping her fellow hero by the shoulder.
“This smoke could be toxic, you’re already choking out!” ------
Flip, for his part, would normally be ecstatic that he was having the opportunity to speak with a Noble, much less a Noble of Breakneck’s stature. Even right now, he couldn’t help but be a little excited Breakneck was talking to him (and a little grateful he was wearing his goggles and his scarf was pulled up over his nose; he was pretty sure he’d look like a starstruck idiot otherwise). Then her words sank in and he set his jaw. Ok, that was enough of being a kid, time to be a hero. And hopefully not cough so hard he'd throw up. Heroes didn't get sick.
“That’s a negative, ma’am. I haven't finished searching the top floor." He punctuated the statement with a few coughs, swallowing down the coughing fit that wanted to escape after them. "The concern's nice, but we should finish eva-" A cough interrupted him, followed by that fit he thought he'd avoided. "We need to get everyone out," he finished weakly, voice cracking as he spoke. All this coughing was making his head spin. He just needed to buckle down and get back to searching. He tried to pull away from Breakneck.
----
She wanted to point out the absurdity of searching when he was speaking to someone who casually broke the sound barrier, to suggest that he let her handle it by way of physically carrying him back outside. Even if his Variance included super-strength it was unlikely that’d he be able to wiggle free before she plonked him onto the pavement.
God, that would have been the right thing to do. Kids weren’t supposed to be first responders, that didn’t change just because they had superpowers.Teens weren't famous for their self-control or fully formed reasoning at the best of times, letting one run around an actual disaster did no one anyone favors. What was he trying to do, be a hero? Get famous? Whether his reasons were selfish or selfless, he was stupid. Breakneck needed to be the adult and get him the hell out of there!
She considered all of this before he even had time to cough, her grip refusing to break as he tried to escape.
“Everyone including you! You can barely stand and you want to rescue others? You’re just going to endanger them.” There was the crack of a support beam buckling under its own weight, the fire weakening everything it touched.
“You have no equipment, no training, you’re out of your league!” ----
Flip frowned at her words, unable to figure out an argument that didn’t boil down to ‘you too’. Some small bitter part wondered if she’d be doing this if he was a Noble like her, but that was as close to a defense as he could find. And that was just childish.
The crack of the support beam made him startle and his shield chose to kick in then - something like a sensation of body-wide static cling enveloped both Flip and Breakneck for a moment before flickering back out, much to his chagrin - it
had dampened the heat, it just didn’t want to stay on for anything but what his mother would probably refer to as a ‘mechanical hazard’. It probably just enhanced the perception that he was just a frightened know-nothing kid. Well, fine, maybe he would be one.
“You take me outside, I’ll run back in.” He cleared his throat, pushing down another coughing fit. He knew that was childish and distracting and probably not fair when, well, she wasn’t wrong - his ‘equipment’ was a scarf and goggles, hardly comparable to a fireman’s full getup, all his training came from comic books, and he was competing with the fastest human on the face of the planet. And honestly, if his family found out he’d risked his health to help
lab workers, he’d probably get punished. But still.
Still.
“There’s gotta be
something I can do to help.” This time, the coughing fit would not be denied, and it was difficult not to double over from the force of it. She was just going to ignore him, he was sure now, he’d be probably dropped at a policeman’s car, and this ‘grand debut’ would end with him running with his tail between his legs before he got arrested and unmasked.
---
“If you’ll run back in you’ll be committing suicide.”It was a harsh thing to say but Breakneck saw no other outcome. He hadn’t been in the building long at all and was already coughing violently, what did he expect to happen when he had to carry out some unconscious lab tech?
“There’s not enough clean air and it’s only going to get worse, all you’ll do is give the coroner more work.”No one could accuse N.O.V.A of being a beloved organinaztion but they had a point when it came to licensing. Freelancers weren’t told that they were too young to throw their lives away.
“If you wanna help ask some of the employees if they know anything, they might have seen how those Scourge started all this. The cops are going to be too busy to chase down a non-Noble right now.” ----
Well. That was a harsh response to his childish threat. The comics had always made Breakneck seem much calmer. Then again, nowhere in those comics was she telling another (fellow?) hero to vacate a scene before they went and died.
He perked up a bit at her second offer. Scourge, right. He’d answered this call assuming a robbery in progress. He’d sorta forgotten that when he saw the building on fire. And he knew a lot about the Scourge (or at least he knew as much as was publicly available). Of course Scourge members would start a fire. It was a bit of busywork, he was sure, but it beat getting thrown off the scene. Or getting arrested, that concern had definitely been there. But if she was sure, and if it really would help, he’d ask around. He’d need a moment of course, couldn’t be doubling over in front of the civilians. Heroes commanded respect, which was hard to do when you were coughing your lungs out. Not that he cared much about respect otherwise, but people tended not to answer questions if they didn’t respect you at least a little.
“I can do that, yeah.” He glanced at her hand still on his shoulder. “Can I let myself out? I promise I’ll go straight-” He paused. “Mostly straight out. I levitated a guy down the stairwell and I don’t think he can walk out.” It would be really awkward if he had brought that guy out and then forgotten him to the whims of the burning building.
---
“Thank you.”She meant it, grateful that she wouldn’t have to explain to a parent how she had let their son immolate himself. She removed her hand, freeing him so that he could escape into the fresh air.
“Get him and go, as fast as you can. I’ll finish the search here.”Breakneck gave the kid a nod, turning to go clear the floor. She had wasted too much time with him already, she would have to trust that he made the right call.
---
Flip nodded and exited the top floor. Rather than waste time on the stairs, requiring even more breathing of hot smoky air (the smoke was beginning to slip out from the fire doors), he jumped down the middle, catching himself with a levitation bubble as the ground floor rushed to meet him. The guy was still there, though moaning. That was a good sign, right? He didn’t think unconscious people moaned a lot. Then again, he couldn’t say he had a lot of experience with unconscious people.
“Don’t worry, sir-” he coughed, increasingly annoyed at his condition. “You’re getting out.” He summoned the levitation bubbles back under the man and towed him out like that towards the others. They mostly looked confused, except one woman who stepped forward with a puzzled-sounding "Eric?" Probably his name. Flip stood up a bit straighter as he stepped aside to let the woman check on the fellow employee. He tugged his scarf back down so he could speak clearly, and cleared his throat. It was starting to hurt, probably from all the coughing.
"Excuse me, did anyone see the fire start?" His voice came out a little hoarse, which was actually helpful - it made him sound older. There was some murmuring among the employees - nope, not me, I didn't know there was a fire until a ceiling tile dropped down, nuh-uh - until one employee made an affirmative sound. The group parted to let the employee come forward - a ragged woman with a purplish bruise on the side of her face. Flip couldn't help but wince at the sight.
"I was processing some slides when one of them came in and knocked me to the ground. I don't remember which one it was. But they went into the flammables cabinet-" Flip had to keep his face straight and bite back the question that they'd labeled where they kept flammable material. Sounded silly to him. "-and pulled out the xylene canisters. They were already splashing it around when they left the room. I'd just gotten back up when the fire reached my area." Xylene, got it. Whatever that meant. Hopefully the firefighters would understand better than Flip did.
---
She watched the boy throw himself to the ground floor, noting the bubble of orange energy he summoned to slow his descent. He had some neat tricks up his sleeve to be sure, but he was still far too young to be running into burning buildings.
Part of being a hero was knowing that some of the people you inspired would take it too far, emboldened into thinking that they could do it too. No matter how many times Breakneck said not to do what she did there would always be someone looking to make their mark.
There was nothing she could do about that now. The little freelancer hit the ground floor “long” after Breakneck went to finish the job, the world slowing to a snail’s pace once again.
Checking the floors was trivial, Breakneck speeding through faster than those last few stragglers could process. Save for the man the tag-along was dealing with everyone still inside was moving outside under their own power, which meant that she could focus on her secondary objective.
Fire was creeping into the Records department by the time she made it back, frozen-in-time flames just barely edging past the boundaries. She ignored it as she sped through, dodging server stacks as she scouted the room. Her once-over, ostensibly for civilians but really for cameras, proved fruitful.
There was one embedded right under the doorway, jutting out just enough to peer into the room. While barely a square inch in size Breakneck had no doubt that it could observe the entire area, had it been active. But with her sharp eyes and abundance of time she could see that the IR lights within had burned out, killed by the extreme heat rising through the building. The Scourge had killed more than just the HVAC, even if they hadn’t meant to.
Why had the Scourge attack Imperial Bio? More importantly, were any of Imperial’s eggheads on Ignoble’s hitlist? Almost certainly so, but confirmation was needed. Breakneck started with the filing cabinet closest to her, opening it and flipping through its contents in the blink of an eye. Then the next one, and the next one, and the one after that, learning nothing that interested her.
But the fourth cabinet had something of note hidden between financial records and payroll papers. ‘Speciment Collection-Whole (see Consent HEF3-2078)’ courtesy of Vertex Sourcing.
“Vertex…” Ignoble had picked up plenty during their dealings with the Syndicate. Vertex was the front for another network of smugglers, the sort who generally dealt with high-end electronics or stolen pharmaceuticals as opposed to heroin and handguns.
This warranted deeper investigation.
The files were roughly folded and tucked inside Breakneck’s flightsuit, a gloved hand closing the cabinet as she strode to the door. She had plenty to look into now, and whatever Imperial Bio was doing, it’d be found out. But for now she had a building to evacuate.
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