Chapter 20

Danny’s grip was so strong. Mal struggled to get even a modicum of air as he stepped into the room through the ashes of the doorway.

Then Danny stiffened, glanced at his arm outstretched between them, and recoiled. He disappeared back outside the door with a snarl on his lips, leaving Mal to drop to the floor.

“Mickey!”

Mal coughed into the floor as his windpipe opened, cringing at having landed roughly on his knees. Lucy and Dom appeared at his sides to help him, while Dom looked ready to barrel through the doorway after Danny.

“He just fuckin’ with us?” she spat.

Mal gripped his friend’s arm to make sure she didn’t do anything rash. It was too much to ask that Danny might have recoiled from hurting Mal. “Must have noticed the reflections...and worried the real Miasma Maker was on. Hephaestus,” Mal rasped over the comms, “where was my warning?”

“What? He’s there? There wasn’t any lightning!” A sound of rustling came over the channel as Priestly checked the camera feed. “I’ve got the full view here, boss. I swear, there was nothing, and no sign of him now.”

“No lightning…” Mal repeated.

“Should we call in Hermes?” Lucy asked.

“Hermes is with you too?” Grant Senior said with a scowl. They were all huddled too close together, Stella having taken Dom’s spot helping Rivers, while Grant’s son looked far too young to be part of this at all, eyes wide as he took in the Titans there to rescue them.

There wasn’t time to explain; Danny could come back at any moment. “We can’t use our trump card carelessly,” Mal said, then snapped to Vaughn. “What’s the process for turning on your program?”

“Uhhh… We just need to pull it up on my computer! Hit enter. Bam. No more reflections. But we’ll need full power back first.”

“Give him your comms,” Mal ordered Lucy. “Hermes?” he spoke into his own as she complied.

“Here.”

“Vaughn is going to give you instructions for turning on a program in the main room at his computer terminal. Do you know where that is well enough to jump there when we need you?”

“Yeah,” Oz said. “I got a good look at the blueprints.”

“Then be ready.” Mal looked to Dom and Lucy in turn. “Don’t call for him before we have a clear shot. Gaia, guard the crew here. Our powers will be more effective offensively. Hephaestus?” he said into the comms again.

“Already working on getting the grid up and running. Care to lend a hand, Captain Shan?”

“Don’t think this is a sign of the times, Hephaestus,” Shan said.

Mal left them to it. “Stay put,” he told Team Zeus and gestured Dom to the door.

“No way,” Grant surged forward.

“Detective…”

“That’s my son.”

“Who’s kept you prisoner for twenty-four hours.” Mal stepped into his space. “If Ludgate has him on a short leash, that’s good for us. You’ll be safer here. That’s what Danny would want, and you know it. Our powers have the best chance of disabling him without anyone getting hurt. Then we lock out Ludgate. Then we save Danny.”

Grant seethed with dissention, but for Danny’s sake, not against Danny himself, never against him the way Mal had grown up with. It warmed him more than he would ever say that Danny had had someone to raise him who loved him that fiercely.

“You have to trust me,” Mal said, expecting the scoff that followed.

“Trust you?”

“Dad…” Stella tried to intervene.

“Hand John a set of comms,” Shan’s voice came over the line.

Mal paused before looking to Vaughn, who was about to hand Lucy’s back to her. “Just a merry band of misfits,” he grumbled, taking the comms himself and shoving them at Grant. “Doesn’t matter whether you trust me or not. Danny does. I’ll do what I have to, whatever it takes, to get him back to his senses and make sure Ludgate pays for what he’s done.”

While Grant lifted the comms to his ear, Mal tuned out whatever Shan said to him and turned for the door. He was surprised and troubled that Danny hadn’t tried to come back inside. He’d be ready, whatever they attempted next, so they had to be smarter.

The others held back as Mal and Dom approached the door. The ashes had all crumbled. It was clear now into the other room, though they couldn’t see much through the narrow opening or with the building still bathed in blue from the emergency lights.

Just before they dashed through, Mal heard Shan say, “Wouldn’t be on this channel, John, if I didn’t believe he meant to do right by your son.”

Starting at the end of the main hallway was to their benefit. It allowed them a full view of what lay ahead as they hugged the walls. Danny wasn’t immediately visible, but there were many rooms to hide in, doorways and side halls and ripe places for ambush. Mal kept Dom boxed closer to the wall so she could ready the heat field. Once they were safely out of range of the others, he told Dom to turn it on.

“The hell—” Dom oomphed before the telling click of the switch could be heard.

Mal whirled around to see her facing the shiny surface of the wall with her hands held out in shock—amplifier gone.

“Asshole took my cuff,” she growled, tightening her hands into fists. “How—”

Mal pulled his own cuffed wrist in close and gestured for Dom to be quiet and to continue down the hallway with him, as he turned on the cold field to ensure Danny didn’t perform any sneak attacks on him.

Cautious, slow, they moved through the open doorway of the main room, edging closer to Vaughn’s computer. There was constant chatter over the comms: Lucy back on now, checking on Priestly and Captain Shan as they worked to get the power up—much harder than having it cut.

Mal’s eyes scanned every surface around them with Dom at his back to do the same, giving them an almost 360-degree view. Nothing.

“I can wait all night for you to slip up, Cho!” Danny called from…somewhere. “Why make it easy on you?”

Mal expanded the cold field further, but only slightly since he couldn’t risk going too far when he couldn’t see how wide the radius stretched. Danny had to be at the edges of the room, hiding in the med room maybe? But Mal could see in through the window. Where was he?

“Got it!” Priestly cheered, and almost instantly a hum filled the room as the power surged to life and the lights flickered on one by one.

Mal blinked against the brightness. If they could get to the computer terminal or were certain they had a window to call in Oz without Danny waiting in the wings to interfere…

“Never did play fair, did you?” Danny said, not any more visible than when the lights were off. “Maybe I should try things your way.”

A flicker of light was Mal’s only warning that wherever Danny was hiding, he had Dom’s amplifier and had readied it to fire with stored power. Mal turned to tackle Dom to the floor because, with the cold field on, they had no idea what flames might do.

Fire roared toward them as they landed, but when the blast reached the cold field, it poofed out of existence, erupting in a shower of snowfall. Dom grumbled beneath Mal as they struggled to get up. They were by the main desk—Vaughn’s computer was right there—but Mal only just managed to roll away when a foot stomped down on his hand.

Somehow Danny was there, within the eye of the cold field as if he’d appeared from nothing, with no traces of frost on his clothing.

Mal wasn’t this helpless. He’d bested Zeus before. Sure, he hadn’t been invested then. Hadn’t cared whether the kid got hurt. Hadn’t loved him. But that shouldn’t make him this sloppy when he was facing a challenge with a clear head. Something was wrong, more so than what he’d felt the moment he entered Pronto that morning. He knew Danny. Knew how to gauge his powers and counter him, no matter how different he was acting.

Standing over them, Danny wore Dom’s amplifier, which he aimed at her head. The cuff should only hold one or two charges, but there was no way to know if it was depleted yet or not. Dom rolled onto her back but stayed down with a glare, while Danny bent to flip the cold field off, then pulled Mal’s amplifier from his wrist as well. Wearing one on each wrist now, he hauled Mal up by the back of his neck as if he weighed nothing and slammed him down onto the desk.

“Hey!” Dom snarled.

“Danny, stop!” Mal heard from Stella. Damn do-gooders never listened.

Peeking toward the door from where his face pressed into the desk, he saw that Stella wasn’t the only one in view. Lucy stood at the forefront with vines around both arms, and Stella and Grant Senior flanked her.

“You’re not gonna attack,” Danny laughed. “You want to save me. You’re all so pathetic.” He flipped Mal over and lifted him from the table by the neck.

“Hermes—” Lucy began.

“No,” Mal croaked as best he could through Danny’s grip. They couldn’t risk calling for Oz now. Danny was too powerful. They needed him incapacitated, at least distracted enough that Oz could have the fifteen seconds they needed.

“Still plotting, huh?” Danny said, while Dom stood and made to pounce. “Do you really want to risk it, Helios?” he flashed her a knowing smile, increasing his grip until Mal choked.

Dom backed off toward the others, and once again Danny laughed.

“You were playing it up before, huh?” he looked at Mal. “Acting all sullen, when you were really planning a raid. Smart. That’s why Shan called me, isn’t it? I’ll have to pay a visit upstairs next. See, I’ve been playing things too nice. Should have just killed them all.”

“Shit,” Shan cursed over the comms.

“They tried to stop me, talk me down, like I’m some child. Sweet Doctor Rivers even tried to give me a sedative, can you believe it? Organized an intervention just because I wanted a little fun. Suddenly, the gang was all here!” Danny spread his free arm out to encompass everyone while his right hand held Mal in place. “Made it easier to tuck them away. But now…I think they’re too much hassle to keep breathing.”

Mal choked further from the squeeze that accompanied the word. Lucy kept her cool, didn’t flinch, and Dom merely clenched her fists tighter, but Danny’s team betrayed their grief for what had become of him.

“Is that…what Ludgate told you?” Mal said.

“Ludgate,” he repeated as if the name tasted bitter on his tongue. “Can’t you get anything right, Prometheus? It’s Hades,” he hissed and leaned in close enough for Mal to see the gold of his eyes that, for a moment, flickered black.

The missing pieces tumbled into place like dominoes and Mal’s gaze hardened.

No lightning. Mal hadn’t seen it once even in this room, watching Danny jump around, divesting Dom of her amplifier, appearing inside the cold field without a shred of frost. The final piece of evidence was the most damning, because the moment he’d entered a room with its reflections closed off, he’d turned and fled.

Mal stared into Danny’s wild, cruel face and closed his own grip around the wrist of the hand choking him. He was such a fool, for all his planning and instincts about what must have happened. Ludgate hadn’t infected Danny—he’d replaced him.

Ramming his knee up into Ludgate’s groin, Mal gasped when the imposter’s grip slackened, but he couldn’t take even a moment’s rest. As Ludgate keeled over, he iced his arms up to his elbows no matter how much Team Zeus called for him to stop.

“Curious thing, Sparky,” Mal aimed at the enemy before him, “but your reflexes seem a bit slow.”