by Nick Svolos
Back at my cube, I spent a half-hour or so going through my inbox and voicemail. There were two voice messages. One was from Dawson, and in his typical tight-lipped fashion, it was curt and to the point. “Sinai didn’t pan out. Let me know if ya get anything from yer friends.” Pretty much what I expected. I didn’t say it was a long shot for nothing. I called him back but the call went straight to his voicemail. I left a message to let him know I was on the job and dropped the matter. The less he knew about the King of Spades, the better for everyone, especially me.
The other call was from a reporter at the Review who wanted some information about the Lompoc fiasco. Sounded like they were trying to play catch-up on the story. I made a note to follow-up with her later. When I had the time, it never hurt to hand out a favor or two. You never knew when you might need a favor yourself, or from whom it might come.
My email was a useless swamp. There were several typo-laden rants from some true believers of the anti-superhuman movement. One or two contained actual threats, but the rest ranged from amusing to downright sad. One stood out above the rest: a meme with my head superimposed onto the body of a Star Wars Gungan. Jar-Jar Conway addressed the Galactic Senate, declaring, “Meesa tink we should letta da supers run eeeevrything.” Cute. I printed that one for my cubicle wall and wondered if I was trending on Twitter.
Alright, back to work. My adventures at Mickey’s bar didn’t get me much more than a good cigar and a tip that there was an extremely attractive supervillain on the loose who had a problem with letting things go. Unfortunately, she wasn’t the one I was looking for. I logged into the archives and started searching.
For most “natural” superhumans, their powers show up at some point in their teens. It’s usually a difficult transition, particularly for flameslingers. Imagine: you’re already dealing with the twin nightmares of high school and puberty, when all of a sudden, fires start popping up around you. Maybe flames leap from your hands and light up some bully who’s giving you a hard time. Or, your body just spontaneously erupts, incinerating your clothes but leaving you naked and unsinged, probably in the middle of a math test you didn’t study for. If you figure out how to control those powers and make it to adulthood, you’ll find yourself pretty near the top of the food chain. There’s a reason why a lot of the gods and wizards in those old myths threw fireballs.
The problem is surviving long enough to get there.
While a full-grown flameslinger with control over his abilities can cover his tracks as well as anyone, a terrified teenager can’t. So, that’s what I searched for. Unexplained fires at places teens frequent. High schools, movie theaters, back seats of cars parked in secluded locations and the like. House fires would be good, too, but there are too many of those. They just mucked up the dataset.
Even with the exclusion of house fires, I still had a mountain of news reports to sift through. Hell, it wasn’t just a mountain, it was the Himalayas—the entire range. Who’d have thought there were this many unexplained fires? It was a wonder the country’s still standing. I needed to narrow things down a bit. Okay, I supposed, whoever pulled these jobs knew what he was doing. The security and fire-suppression systems had been disabled. No bodies so far, so he knew enough to look for security guards, probably casing each target and timing their patrols. So, I was looking for someone old enough to have learned the trade. I arbitrarily set the cut-off at someone over the age of twenty-two. Counting back from there to the upper bound of the average age of puberty, sixteen for boys and fourteen for girls, I could eliminate any story that happened within the last six years.
I still needed to cut the pile of articles down by quite a bit, so I tried to imagine what the upper bound of the perp’s age might be. Arson is a crime of the young, but I was thinking that was the wrong trail to follow. Most arsons are committed by teenagers, but I was pretty sure my guy had graduated past that point. Besides, something like seventy-five percent of arson cases went unsolved. It was hard to trust the profiling data based on stats like that.
Instead, I went with burglar profiles, assuming this guy just happened to have a special ability that made crime concealment an easy hedge in case some evidence got left behind. I couldn’t find a hard and fast age range for this sort of crime on the web. Dawson could probably give me a better answer, but I wanted to see how far I could get on my own. I set forty-five as the arbitrary choice for the upper bound of this perp’s age. Thirty-five was the normal age where people started dropping out of the life of crime, but I gave this guy an extra decade. Being a natural came with some advantages that extend their careers. They age, but their bodies don’t break down as fast as the rest of us. Outside the obvious hazards of supervillainy, they had it pretty good. Lucky bastards.
Though my dataset was now maybe a third of what I started with, it was still huge. I went through the first few reports to get a feel for how bad this was going to be and didn’t like the results. This was going to take a week. Judging by what Dawson told me, we didn’t have that long. This guy and his crew could take down a few more warehouses or skip town completely in that time. While that bothered me, what bothered me more was that someone could get hurt. Everyone slips up eventually, and I didn’t like the thought of that happening on my watch. Besides, I needed this story if I didn’t want to spend the rest of my career haunting the red carpet outside some ritzy Hollywood dance club to see who Suave was dating that week.
I poked my head over the cubicle wall. Ratna was at her desk. Good. If she wanted to break into the story-chasing business, this would be a good place to start. I picked up the phone.
“Hey, what’s up?” she answered.
“You working on anything?”
“Nothing that can’t wait. Whatcha got?”
“Trying to track down our errant torch. Could use some help.”
“Awesome! I’ll be right over.”
“See if you can grab a conference room. I’m gonna get a couple of interns. There’s a lot of data to go through.”
After hanging up, I stopped by Harry’s office to let him know what I had planned and scored a couple extra bodies for my effort. A few minutes later, we were setting up our laptops in a little workroom while I explained what I needed.
With that, we put our heads down and got to work. There’s nothing glamorous to this type of work, but this is what investigative journalism looks like. You spend hours sifting through piles of stuff, hoping to find something that fits your puzzle. Something that everyone else missed, never knowing if the needle you’re looking for was ever in the haystack in the first place.
Hey, it can’t all be explosions and supervillain fights.
IV
“You sure you're ready for this?” SpeedDamon grinned as he took his place opposite me across the training room.
“No.” I chuckled, rising into the air and hovering about halfway between the floor and ceiling. “But don’t let that stop you.”
My day had been grueling—a long day of mind-numbing research—and the last thing I wanted was to get my butt kicked by one of my friends, but that was the luck of the draw. At least, with the interns and Ratna’s help, we’d managed to get more than halfway through the mountain of stories. I cut them loose a little after five o’clock. I’d have kept going all night, but I’ve found it was important to keep one’s mind sharp when doing that sort of work. It was too easy to miss a key detail when you were groggy. Besides, I had an appointment downtown.
The Angels had a team meeting every Wednesday night, but before that, they held a training exercise. They’d told me it was important. If I wanted to survive the real thing, I needed to practice against other supers. Hone my skills. “Git gud,” as the kids say.
They weren’t fooling me. These guys just liked to fight. They lovingly dubbed it “The Wednesday Rumble.” I thought of it more like “Wednesday Night’s Unlubricated Prostate Exam.”
It was a simple process. Everybody’s name went into a hat and you picked an opponent for a one-on-o
ne sparring match. The junior member, me, got the “honor” of choosing first. To date, I’d never been able to beat any of them. Just my luck, tonight I’d drawn Speedy’s name out of the hat. The reigning champion.
Speedsters are almost impossible to handle. The slowest ones are a pain in the neck, buzzing around you at impossible speeds, taking you apart with unblockable punches at nerve clusters and the like. SpeedDamon was one of the fastest. Nobody knew his top speed, not even him. He had to hold back so he didn’t accidentally set the atmosphere on fire.
Behind me, Herculene cheered, “Get ‘im, Cap!” and rang the bell.
SpeedDamon raced toward me in an instant. I could swear his lime-green skinsuit looked almost blue, and I tried to brace myself for his first flurry of punches. They never came. Instead, he cut sharply to his right, just outside my reach, surrounding me in a blur of green. Before I could react, a burst of air hit me from below, slamming me against the ceiling and knocking a few marbles loose.
“Hey! Nodamagingtheroof!” a high-pitched voice chirped as the blur of green reversed direction.
I didn’t get a chance to respond. In the next instant a vortex sucked me back down into a painful impact with the floor. The speedster stepped back out of range to give my head a second to stop spinning.
“Readytotapout,buddy? Herc’llkillmeifIhurtyatoobad.”
I shook my head as I got my unsteady legs under me and stood. My back was to him, but before I turned to face him, I tapped a pocket on my utility belt and a bunch of little silver pellets filled my hand. I wobbled a bit, letting him think he’d rattled me more than I really was. Not hard to do, considering the stars dancing around my eyes.
“Not tonight, pal.” I got a little something for ya. Something the boys in the lab whipped up for me. I braced myself, settling into a fighting stance like Three Dollar Bill taught me. “Let’s try that again.”
“Asyouwish.” He flashed a grin at me and kicked it into high gear. There was no time to finesse this. I waved my hand in an arc in front of me as quickly as I could, releasing my little surprise in his path, stretching my arms out to my sides and pushing forward with all my might.
Blinding lights erupted between us. Gouts of dense smoke filled the air. Pyrotechnic sparklers leaped up and exploded at eye level. A whole Fourth of July celebration occluded the scene.
The look on Damon’s face was priceless. The grin was gone, replaced by wide-eyed astonishment. I got a good look at it as he slid under my left armpit, just barely evading my attempt to clothesline him.
Damn.
I might have had him if I’d dropped a couple inches lower in my stance. Instead, all I got for my trouble was a high-speed triple-shot just below the ribs.
My diaphragm spasmed as his attack hit home, blasting the wind out of my lungs. I collapsed to the ground, gasping for air. Spent, I tapped the floor before he could move in to pummel me some more. If I could have gotten any air into my chest, I’d have been laughing.
It felt good. I finally managed to wipe that grin off his face.
SpeedDamon vibrated down to normal and offered me a hand up. “Damn, dude. That was … good!”
Archangel activated the industrial blowers in the ceiling to clear the smoke. I massaged my ribs. Mentalia tossed me a towel, a big grin on her face. “So close.”
“Thanks,” I said, slinging the towel over my neck. The fight hadn’t lasted long enough to work up a sweat. SpeedDamon and I hopped over to the other side of the barricades to spectate the next bout.
Three Dollar Bill clapped me on the back as he went into the ring to square off against Mentalia. “Helluva job, Cap. You’ll get ‘im next time.”
“If I can get him to fall for that again, I’ll deserve it.”
Herculene swept me up and planted a kiss on my lips. “I can’t wait to see what you’ll come up with next.” My ribs barked at her embrace, but I didn’t mind. She was a hell of a kisser. Her eyes beamed with pride. She loved the heroing life, and loved that I could be a part of it, even if only for a little while. I wondered, for the umpteenth time, if she’d still keep me around when I gave it up for good. We’d had many discussions on the topic, and we were already dating before I’d gotten these powers, but it still worried me. She was the kind of woman you didn’t let get away. You wouldn’t find another.
I wouldn’t have to wait long for my answer. In two weeks, I’d be out of the hero game or out of a job.
***
The next match, between Three Dollar Bill and Mentalia, went on quite a bit longer than mine. The rainbow-clad karate master dodged Mentalia’s hazy purple waves of telekinetic force at the speed of spirit. That’s what he called it, anyway. According to him, the human mind is too slow. He goes into some sort of kung-fu wizard state where his spirit takes over his body. Damon says it’s all bunk, but watching Bill move, glowing faintly with a golden aura, I couldn’t help but believe the martial artist’s story.
The problem was that Mentalia was tough as nails. The petite woman didn’t look it. She was five-foot nothing and one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met, but when it was time for her to do her thing, she was a terror. She floated in the center of the training room protected by an impregnable bubble of shimmering thought while swinging telekinetic haymakers at her opponent. Three Dollar Bill gave it his all, but just couldn’t make a dent in her shield, although the spectacle of the transparent purple sphere converting the force of his punches to light was quite the show, like one of those laser-light spectaculars at the Griffith Park Observatory—without the bad case of the munchies afterward. She eventually wore Bill down, caught him with a lucky shot that knocked him across the training room floor and he tapped out.
Archangel’s smooth voice emanated from hidden speakers. “If I may interrupt, Ultiman would like to start the meeting.”
Herculene groaned. She wouldn’t get her chance to beat up Suave this week. The Latino telenovela star grinned with relief. “Saved by the bell.”
“Next week, I get to go first,” the love of my life grumbled. She lived for this stuff. I felt bad for her, but I didn’t really mind seeing Suave get off the hook. He wasn’t much of a match for her. Provided she dodged his opening volley of energy blasts, she’d get in close to him. Then it would be over. Suave was a cannon, but one made of glass.
We made our way to the elevators and up to the forty-second-floor briefing room. Ultiman waited for us at the far side of the round conference table that took up the center of room. Normally, he’d have been down in the training room with the team, but since he was now just a normal, I thought he preferred to avoid it. Being a hero gets into your blood. My take on it was that he didn’t want to be reminded of what he’d given up.
Screens around the room presented crime statistics, weather patterns, seismic activity, and various other sets of data. One had a list of upcoming court dates for the Omegas and other supervillains the team helped capture. “Helped” was a convenient fiction. In truth, The Angels brought them down while the authorities did crowd-control. Nobody really believed the cops could handle the sort of threats the team dealt with, but letting the authorities take the credit greased the wheels at City Hall.
“Let us start with old business,” Ultiman said as he called the meeting to order. “First, some good news. The DA informed me this morning that she has enough evidence to make her case against Omega without our testimony. Mr. Conway will have to testify, but as his involvement was as a civilian, I do not imagine that will be a problem.”
A wave of relief spread through the room. With the exception of Bill, everyone had an ID to protect, and you couldn’t take the stand wearing a mask. Fortunately for me, Captain Stand-In didn’t exist back then. I could testify until I was blue in the face.
Of course, I’d be back to being a normal human by then. I hoped that the assistant DA was good at her job. I might be signing my own death warrant if any of the Omegas beat the rap.
“Sounds like you’ve got some bad news to drop on us,
” Mentalia observed.
“Hopefully not. I suppose that depends on Mr. Conway’s report.”
Somehow—I’m not sure how—it had become my job to identify and investigate potential members for the team to replace Phoenix Fire. I supposed I was the logical choice. I had the contacts and skills to dig up any dirt that might come back to hurt the team. Plus, I was motivated as hell.
“I have two for you this week.” I pulled a wireless keyboard over and brought up a dossier on the big screen. An image of a trim young woman appeared on the left side. She had short black hair, a mask obscuring the bottom half of her face, and a red and green skinsuit in an urban camouflage pattern. A list of personal data filled the right side of the screen.
“This is Pixel, Team Powerhouse’s best kept secret,” I began. “Her role was surveillance and intel gathering. She can shrink down to about a hundred angstroms without triggering a singularity, yet still retain the strength and speed of a normal human. Powerhouse kept her membership under wraps to avoid tipping off their capabilities, but she’s always wanted a more public role. Tells me she’s a team player. I spoke with her last week, and she’s interested in coming out here.”
Damon reviewed the data on a tablet. His face showed he liked what he saw. “She’s amazing. How come you didn’t bring her up sooner?”
“I was hoping to pry Orangutan out of New York. There’s a bit of bad blood between them over the Saracen fiasco, and I didn’t think I could get them both. But Orangutan’s given me a firm ‘no,’ so that puts her in play.”
“Says here she’s a computer expert,” Bill observed. “Might give you a run for your money, Damon.”
“I don’t see that as a negative.” The speedster grinned. “It’s not like any of you Luddites are gonna take a coding class. After the Schadenfreude thing, I wouldn’t mind a little backup.”