Where There's Fire (Panopolis Book 2) by Cari Z.

control?”
    “Something like that . . . Wait, I thought that machine was made by Neo Cortex?”
    “Neo Cortex is a subsidiary of GenCorp, much like Nutrigro.”
    I frowned. “Jesus, is there anything that this company doesn’t have their fingers in?”
    “Not much in Panopolis.”
    Interesting. If I wasn’t on a schedule . . . This would be easier if I held on to her from here on out though. I finished suiting up, then took—another glance at her badge read DR. WOJCIECHOWSKI, MARIE—Dr. Marie with me into the next lab. “I need some of Freight Train’s straws,” I said. “And also the nearest functioning computer.”
    “We refer to them as eating apparatuses,” she corrected me mildly, and walked us back to a smooth steel table with a complicated alembic setup on top and drawers built into the body of it. “Here.” She opened one of them for me and drew out a sealed plastic bag full of those familiar metal-capped straws. “The compound powering them has a half-life of two days in isolation, so they must be kept together as long as possible to achieve maximum use. The nearest computer is the laptop on Dr. Smithson’s desk, there.”
    “Very helpful,” I said absently as I examined the bag, then led her over to her colleague’s desk. The laptop was powered up, thankfully. I plugged the thumb drive into the side of it, stood back, and watched the Trojan start to work. The screen went blank except for a bouncing Magic 8 ball and a timer to its finish. Someone was a cheeky little hacker.
    “Would you like to know another helpful fact, Subject 1147?”
    “My name is Edward.”
    “Immaterial. Soon you’ll be an inmate again.” My eyes snapped to hers, and she somehow managed to appear smug without moving her face at all. “A fire alarm in this building triggers an automatic alert to a number of high-powered Heroes, including Freight Train, who lives nearby. He should be here within another two minutes. You won’t be able to escape.”
    She’d amazed me right out of anger into astonishment. “You . . . are conniving even while I’m controlling your emotions?”
    “Is that why I feel so determined?” she asked mildly. And, shit, I was feeling determined now that I had the straws. “I imagine once Freight Train is done with you, I’ll be feeling amused.”
    Freight Train was on his way here. She was right—I wouldn’t be able to get out of the building fast enough to avoid him, or any of the Heroes who followed. I needed a plan. I needed a fucking plan, but first I had to secure Dr. Marie.
    Duct tape—every office had it, and this place had extra-strength super scientist duct tape, so it was easy to make sure my hostage wasn’t going to cause me trouble anytime soon. I covered her mouth, padded her ears and taped down a pair of paper towels over her eyes, so she wouldn’t be spying on me either. The few parts of her face that weren’t covered up looked pissed when I stepped back, but I didn’t have time to worry about that. If Freight Train was coming, I needed to decide how to deal with him when he got here.
    Freight Train . . . okay, he used to like me. Maybe “like” was too mild a term; he’d been crushing on me hard before I was arrested. I’d wanted to be friends, but he’d wanted to be way more.
    He couldn’t touch anyone thanks to his force field, which could only be penetrated by itself. That had always struck me as fishy, honestly. GenCorp could make disposable straws by the dozen so he could eat, but they couldn’t make a device with a big enough force field to let the man experience someone else’s touch? Not very plausible, but Freight Train wasn’t the type to question authority. He was, however, practically dying for some physical affection.
    And I happened to have a handful of things that could penetrate his force field.
    The alarm cut off. That probably meant the cavalry was here. I emptied the bag onto the table, grabbed the duct tape again and, by dint of using waaay