“Wind Runner!”
He rolled his eyes, though of course, she couldn’t see it.
“Yes, Tapestry,” he said, sprinting toward the building’s edge. “Those were gunshots.”
Malcolm launched forward into the open air, using his gift, wind manipulation, to keep himself airborne. His clothes fluttered, vibrating rhythmically from the intensity of the gust. People on the street below did a double take. Malcolm’s heart, as always, sailed with delight.
It wasn’t exactly flying, more like extended jumping. Flying was dangerous, both in the obvious physical sense, but also mentally. Malcolm was a champion, and every time he used his powers for an extended period of time, he ran the risk of stepping over his limit, and turning into a monster.
My track record’s pretty good so far. More than a week in and I’ve still got my faculties intact.
The gap between the hospital and the bank was perhaps a hundred feet, and Malcolm was on a trajectory to land on the other building’s roof. He considered whether it was the best course of action for a moment, and then shifted routes, burning off height and angling for a third story window instead.
As he came within the last few feet of the window, Malcolm multitasked, still guiding his path with the wind while also using a directed burst of it to knock out the window frame. It came loose with a satisfying pop, and fell to the floor without shattering.
Malcolm followed right behind it, tucking and rolling, and then banging clumsily into a desk. He pulled himself to his feet once he was disentangled. Tapestry was saying something over the earpiece.
“I’m approaching the front entrance,” she said. “I’m going to see if I can negotiate with them.”
“Perfect,” whispered Malcolm. “I’m already inside. I’ll get as many people out as I can while you keep them distracted.”
“Give me a headcount, if you can,” said Tapestry. “Of both the robbers and the hostages.”
“Got it.”
Malcolm glanced around the room. There were a couple of people hiding under desks. He waved them over to him and spoke in a hushed voice.
“I’m going to get you out of here, okay?” He smiled reassuringly. “None of you are scared of heights, are you?”
“I am,” whispered a woman, tall and a little chubby.
“It’s okay,” said Malcolm. “The police already have a net set up and everything. Here, take a look.”
He gestured for her to look out the window. The woman did, glancing down at the street below, where there clearly was not a net or any sort of police presence. Malcolm set his hand on her shoulder and pushed before she could back away.
Using the wind, he created a cushion for her, making her drop an entirely gentle affair, outside of the woman’s terrified scream. Malcolm chuckled and gestured for the next employee, a redheaded man, to step up to the window.
“Oldest trick in the book,” he said. “Are you good to jump, or…?”
The man didn’t even hesitate. Malcolm lowered him down as well, and turned around to see that the last employee, a younger woman with brown hair and freckles, had been taken hostage. A gunman had a pistol pressed against her temple. Silent tears rolled down the woman’s cheeks, and her eyes were blank.
“Whoa…” said Malcolm. “Hey, come on man. You don’t want to do that. Just talk to me.”
“Fuck you,” said the robber. “Enough with this bullshit. You can’t help me. And maybe I do want to do this. How would you know?”
Malcolm shrugged.
“I was saying you don’t want to do that because champions work in teams of two,” he said. “And my partner is standing right behind you.”
The gunman glanced over his shoulder at the very empty hallway behind him. Malcolm slammed into him with the wind, knocking loose both the gun and the girl. He grabbed the girl’s hand and pulled her into the room, wondering if he had time to get her out the window before engaging the robber.
“I honestly can’t believe you fell for that,” said Malcolm. “It’s not the oldest trick in the book, but it’s got to be pretty… close.”
The robber pulled a second firearm out from the back of his waistband, larger and more intimidating than the first. He took aim. Malcolm moved without thinking, falling to the ground and pulling the girl with him.
He flattened himself down on top of her, his back awkwardly pressing into her chest. Using his wind manipulation at full strength, Malcolm focused on the barrel of the gun and created a tiny but extremely powerful current of wind. The robber opened fire, and the first bullet missed by a couple of inches.
It wasn’t because his aim had been bad. Malcolm could, with intense focus, redirect the paths of bullets. It only worked if he could predict their trajectory ahead of time, however, and it took all the wind power he could muster.
It felt a bit like lifting something heavy. Malcolm’s gift, when it had first manifested, reminded him of having an invisible muscle, hovering in the air around him. He could use it as he pleased, but it took energy, will, and practice to do anything useful.
The robber continued firing, unloading bullet after bullet. Frustratingly, the man also began to adjust his aim to compensate for Malcolm’s trick, something that he had hoped would go unnoticed. Malcolm shifted the direction of the wind current, pressing himself back against the girl hard as though she were auditioning to be a pancake.
The gunman paused. Malcolm lifted one of his hands up, ready to make another appeal to the man’s sense of self preservation. Before he could say anything, the robber fired again.
The bullet ripped through Malcolm’s palm, tearing a gory hole into the center of it. Malcolm stared at the wound in disbelief. The woman underneath him started screaming, and the robber took off down the hallway.
“God dammit, that smarts!” Malcolm grimaced, only relaxing as he noticed his second, hidden power going to work on fixing the damage.
It was rare for a champion to have more than one superhuman power, and even rarer to have a power with as much flexibility as power mimicry. Malcolm could absorb the abilities of other champions and monsters just through touching them.
Tapestry, one of the few who knew his secret, was more than willing to let him borrow her regeneration whenever the two of them were required to head into dangerous situations. Malcolm watched as threads of muscle and tendons stitched themselves back together. The wound was painful, but not to the extent of crippling him or keeping him from engaging in pursuit.
“Stay here!” he shouted to the woman. “I’ll be right back!”
Malcolm charged out into the hallway, and almost instantly, more gunshots began ringing out. He cursed, dropping to a crouch. The robber was blind firing from a room down the hallway, but the danger was still real enough. His borrowed regeneration ability could only sustain so much damage before short circuiting. It didn’t make him invincible.
“Come on, man!” shouted Malcolm. “This is pointless! You can’t hold out all day.”
“Fuck you!” shouted the man. “I have plenty of ammo, no reason why I can’t.”
He fired another shot around the corner, which Malcolm deflected with the wind. He could feel the euphoria and head rush from overusing his powers slowly settling in, and knew he needed to bring the situation to an end as soon as he could.
Instead of doing the obvious thing and charging forward into the man’s line of fire, Malcolm doubled back to the first room he’d come into. He moved over to the window, climbed out the edge of it, and planted his foot on the building’s outer wall.
Malcolm started running along the wall, pushing his body with the wind to keep his feet in contact. It was one of the very first tricks he’d learned, and on top of looking like something out of a video game, it gave him a huge advantage in mobility over normal humans.
Soon enough, he was peering in through the window of the room the robber was holed up in. Malcolm resisted the urge to smash through the glass, instead testing to see if the window was unlocked. It was, and he slowly slid it open.