Action Figures - Issue Four: Cruel Summer

by Michael C Bailey

  “I thought you weren’t going to make excuses.”

  “They’re not excuses; they’re facts. What I’m trying to say...” Edison lets out a long breath. He doesn’t speak for a while. “What I’m saying is that I am ultimately nothing but a normal human being, and that sometimes makes me a very poor super-hero. This is one of those times.”

  Edison gets to his feet and offers me a hand up. I don’t accept his help.

  Mindforce and Sara slip out of the detention area. “The security detail from Byrne is pulling up,” Mindforce says. “I’m going to let them in. Once they’re on the road, we need to issue a statement to the media.”

  “Yes, right,” Edison says, then he turns to me. “Let me ask Catherine to give you a ride home.”

  “Don’t bother,” Sara says.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I have a lot of nervous energy to burn off.”

  “Yeah, same here,” I say.

  “All right. Sara,” Mindforce says, pulling his cowl off. “You got him. It’s over.”

  Sara’s body sags. She releases a shuddering breath and slumps into Bart’s arms. She sort of hangs there in his hug, not returning the embrace.

  We’re left to find our own way to the Wonkavator. The walk passes in silence until we reach the subbasement.

  “I can’t believe you defended him,” Sara says, “after everything he put me through...”

  “I’m not defending him,” I say.

  “Sure sounded like it.”

  I stop, blocking Sara’s path. “I am not defending him, but I am worried that you’re so quick to see him executed.”

  “You think less of me for wanting him dead?” Sara says, not so much an inquiry as an accusation.

  I do think less of her on some level. I can see it in her, a bloodlust so intense I have to wonder if, should the King of Pain receive a death sentence, Sara won’t demand to throw the switch herself. I expected a whole lot better of her, and my disappointment is inching toward full-on disgust.

  But what right do I have to pass judgment on her? The King of Pain stalked her, terrorized her, and was maybe two seconds away from snapping her neck when I intervened, and believe me, staring death in the face like that quite literally changes you. My second encounter with Manticore ended with a blade to my throat. He could have ended me with a flick of the wrist. My nightmares bring back the raw, primal terror I felt in that moment, full force, and if I were to open my eyes to find Manticore standing there in front of me, I’d blast him all over creation without hesitating.

  For all my noble talk, I’m no better. Under the right circumstances, I could be as ruthless and merciless as Sara — but I have faith that, in the moment of truth, I would step back from that abyss.

  And I have faith that Sara is no different.

  “You’ve been through so much lately,” I say. “You have every right to feel like you do and I have no right to dump on you.”

  In an instant her face changes completely, softening. It’s like a mask has fallen off to reveal the true face beneath — a friendly face.

  “Thank you,” Sara says. She swallows hard. “I want to go home.”

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  As we walk home, we decide to wait until the nightly homework session to fill Matt, Stuart, and Missy in. We briefly consider calling them now and getting it over with, but neither of us feel like rehashing the afternoon three times over.

  We stop by Sara’s house, so she can finally grab her change of clothes. The driveway is empty, which is no small relief. We run in, stuff a backpack with underwear, a few pairs of jeans, a couple of T-shirts, and one of her many, many hoodies (seriously, she owns more hoodies than I own skirts — and I own a lot of skirts).

  We head home and enter the kitchen to find Mom applying a spice rub to some chicken breasts. “Dinner will be ready in a half-hour or so,” she informs us, and Sara takes advantage of the time to run upstairs and grab a quick shower.

  “How’s she doing?” Mom asks.

  “As well as can be expected,” I say (which is not an inaccurate statement, but Mom doesn’t need to know the full context).

  “Have her parents tried to get in touch with her?”

  “Not that I know.”

  “We might have to ask her therapist to get involved. This mess isn’t going to clean itself up. I’m not trying to rush her out of the house,” Mom assures me.

  “No no, I get what you’re driving at, but I don’t hold out much hope Mr. Danvers will get his head screwed on straight anytime soon.”

  Mom sighs. “Right there with you, hon.”

  “If Sara’s going to be here for a while, maybe we could put her in Granddad’s room so she isn’t stuck on the couch the whole time?”

  Mom stiffens when I mention Granddad’s room, and I wonder if my well-intentioned suggestion was asking too much too soon. It’s only been a month since he died.

  “Or I can sleep on the couch and give her my bed,” I say. “Whatever.”

  “Let me think about it,” Mom says, but it’s an empty promise. She’s already thought about it, rejected it, and is ready to move on to another non-Granddad topic. She finishes prepping the chicken and pops the tray into the oven. “That reminds me.”

  “What?”

  “Ben wants to go away for the weekend, just the two of us. He knows this little B-and-B up in Vermont — Brattleboro, I think? — and he wants to take me there after work Friday. It means you girls would be alone until Sunday night.” Mom drums her fingertips on the counter to fill several seconds of heavy silence. “He thinks I need some time away.”

  Translation: Ben wants to take Mom away from a house that is at present nothing but one big, sad memory of her late father and get her out of her own head for a little while.

  “I think that’s a great idea,” I say.

  “Really?”

  “Really. You deserve it. Go have fun for a weekend. Sleep in late. Relax. Visit a maple syrup farm and pet wild cows or whatever it is people in Vermont do.”

  There’s relief in her smile. “I’ll call Ben and let him know.”

  “You’d better.”

  We gather at Matt’s house for the nightly homework jam, which is a rarity nowadays because none of us much care for the location anymore. Not to sound too New Agey hippie-dippy about it but there’s an uncomfortable energy in the house, and has been ever since we walked in on Mr. Steiger mid-indiscretion.

  Although the Steiger parentals have more or less reconciled and have been working diligently to repair their marriage, Matt’s relationship with his dad remains strained (and that’s putting it charitably). Case in point...

  “Matt, you want anything from the kitchen?” Mr. Steiger says, pausing in the doorway to said kitchen.

  “Uh-uh,” Matt grunts as he pretends to be deeply absorbed in his math homework.

  “You sure? You don’t want me to grab some chips or sodas or anything?”

  “No.”

  The rest of us politely thank Mr. Steiger for the offer but insist we’re good. Please note, this means Stuart is rejecting an offer of food. That’s true friendship.

  “Okay,” Mr. Steiger says. “I’ll be in my office if you need anything.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  We wait until Mr. Steiger passes back through, a diet soda in his hand, and then it’s on to business.

  “Guys, we have to talk,” I say. Oh, how to approach this delicately? Eh, screw it. There is no way to approach this delicately. “We captured the King of Pain.”

  The void of outer space is noisier than this living room. I wouldn’t call it a stunned silence as much as a cautiously skeptical silence, like they’re waiting for me to drop a punch line or something.

  “You what?” Matt says.

  I tell the group what happened, how the King of Pain’s apparent flight from justice was a fake-out, how Sara and I got the drop on him, and how the King of Pain should by now be settling into his cozy little iJail cell at Byrne.


  “Whah,” Missy says, awestruck.

  “Dude,” Stuart says, awestruck.

  “Do you know how lucky you two got?” Matt says, unstruck by awe. Sara and I scowl at him. “Look, I don’t want to sound like I’m dumping on what you did —”

  “Fail,” I say.

  “— but come on. This guy is hardcore. He’s faced, like, a dozen super-heroes with more experience than you two put together, killed most of them, and gotten away with it for six years. He should have shredded you.”

  “Yeah, well, he didn’t,” Sara says, but Matt’s right: we got lucky. Our powers, our training, the fact we were fighting for our lives — none of that can be discounted, but I have to face facts: we beat the King of Pain because we got impossibly lucky, and that scares the hell out of me.

  Luck like that doesn’t last forever.

  FOURTEEN

  Sleep does not come easy. I wake up with a headache and the unshakable feeling I had bad dreams all night long, though I can’t remember what I dreamed about.

  A few extra minutes in the shower, letting the hot water rain down on my neck and shoulders, doesn’t alleviate the headache, so I pop a couple of Tylenol and head downstairs to coffee myself up good. Sara, who refused my offer to swap sleeping spots, is out cold on the couch.

  “Hey,” I say, gently shaking her. “Time to wake up.”

  “No it’s not,” Sara murmurs. “You’re lying.”

  “Alas, mine is a harsh truth. You want coffee?”

  Sara makes a noise that I interpret as a yes. She joins me in the kitchen after a few minutes.

  “You look like I feel,” I say. Sara grunts. “Did you not sleep well either?”

  “No. Lots of dreams again. And I was up kind of late texting with Meg. She’s graduating Saturday.”

  “Lucky her.”

  “No kidding. Anyway, she’s doing stuff with her family afterwards but she’s having a party Sunday, and she’s invited the team.”

  “I think that sounds like a fantastic idea.”

  “I’ll text her later and let her know.”

  “Let who know what?” Mom says, making a beeline for the coffee maker. Sure, Mom, go right ahead and help yourself. Don’t wait your turn or anything.

  “Our friend Meg invited us to her graduation party Sunday.” Mom looks a question at me. “I babysit her little brother Farley. You met her at Granddad’s memorial service, the girl with the really pale blond hair?”

  “Oh, yes, I do remember her.” Mom narrows her eyes. “What kind of party?”

  “A perfectly safe party, in the middle of the day,” Sara says. “Her family will be there the whole time.”

  Mom nods and finishes preparing a travel mug of coffee. “Okay. Well, you two have fun, and I’ll see you when I get home Sunday night.”

  Sara waits for Mom to leave the house. “Man, I see what you mean about her,” Sara says. “She doesn’t let you do anything without giving you the third degree, does she?”

  “The third degree? That? Seriously? That was nothing,” I say. “I wish I got off that easy all the time.”

  “If you say so.”

  Sara foregoes a shower and throws on the first thing she grabs out of her backpack, a gray hoodie that’s as dowdy and baggy as you can get. She pulls the hood up as soon as we step out of the house and into a sunny June morning. My attempts at chit-chat during our walk to school fail; she responds with uh-huhs and uh-uhs and noncommittal grunts and never comes close to uttering a complete sentence.

  Malcolm sidles up to me as we approach the school, slipping an arm around my waist. I snuggle into the crook of his arm and rest my head on his chest, and the tension in my neck and shoulders melts away. He feels so good.

  “Good morning to you, Miss Hauser,” he says.

  “And to you, Mr. Forth,” I say.

  “Morning, Sara, how are you?”

  Sara pulls back her hood. “I’m fine, thank you for asking,” she says. The sentiment is as transparently fakey as her smile. Malcolm doesn’t notice. Or he’s too much of a gentleman to call her on it.

  “So, the bad news first: Dad is insisting on a family night tonight and would like me to stay home.”

  “Boo, hiss,” I say. “And the good news?”

  “Hm...well, it may or may not be good news. Dad would like you to join us.”

  “Oh!” I say with perhaps more surprise than is warranted. I mean, Malcolm and I have been dating for four months; dinner with his family feels long overdue (not that I know this for sure. I’ve never been in what I’d call a proper relationship).

  “I have to work after school, so how about I pick you up at your place around six-thirty?”

  “No, sure, that’s fine, it’ll give me a chance to make myself pretty.”

  “You’re always pretty,” Malcolm says, kissing my forehead.

  “God, get a room, you two,” Sara says humorlessly.

  Again, Malcolm misses (or chooses to ignore) her snitty attitude. I decide to follow suit and refrain from saying anything, although I dearly want to ask her what crawled up her butt and died.

  Stop it, Carrie. Sara’s recovering from a traumatic experience. The poor thing is wired up like a Christmas tree and giving her grief isn’t going to help.

  All right, here we go, shifting into full-power supportive friend mode. I can do this. I did it for Mom; I can do it for Sara.

  Malcolm parts ways with us at my locker. Matt, Stuart, and Missy arrive soon thereafter.

  “Any word on what’s going on with you-know-who?” Matt asks me.

  I check my phone. The last message from Concorde was the one sent out last night via the New England HeroNet — a private information-sharing system accessible only to member super-heroes — which says, simply: King of Pain captured, at Byrne, updates to follow.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “But that’s a good thing, right?” Stuart says. “No news is good news, right?”

  “Absolutely,” I say, putting on my best cheerful face. “Guys, this is no different than when we put away Archimedes or the Bestiary or Buzzkill Joy. All that’s left now is to file our reports and wait for the Protectorate to drag the King of Pain’s sorry ass to court. It’s all smooth sailing from here on out.”

  It’s no St. Crispin’s Day speech, but it does the trick. We break and head for our respective homerooms, our burdens lessened and our spirits lightened.

  Of course, none of the people we’ve helped put away have actually gone to trial yet, but why let a pesky fact get in the way of my delusion?

  “Are you ready for this?” Warden Pearce says.

  Concorde glances at his teammates. Mindforce is unusually intense, quiet. He was silent throughout their flight to Byrne, lost in troubled thought. Concorde suspects he might have to play the role of good cop on this one — a role with which he is not comfortable. Nina is unreadable behind her goggles and facemask, but her posture is tense, like she’s bracing for a fight.

  “As ready as we’ll ever be,” Concorde says. “Has his attorney arrived?”

  “He has. He got Drew Coleco.”

  “Coleco,” Concorde says, rolling the name around in his head. “Right, he was assigned to defend Hydra after the Bestiary’s botched jailbreak job a few months ago. A little too enthusiastic, as I recall.”

  Mindforce grunts, an apathetic sound.

  “Game faces on, people,” Concorde says. “Warden. If you would?”

  Pearce, a towering wall of a man who radiates quiet authority, personally leads the Protectorate through the maze that is Byrne, navigating a series of halls and elevators with practiced ease. Personnel, mostly guards clad in heavy body armor and armed with automatic rifles, stand a little straighter as he passes. They acknowledge him with the barest of nods. He nods at each of them in return.

  Pearce pauses in front of a particular door flanked by a quartet of guards — twice the normal detail for a prisoner deemed a high risk. Pearce gestures vaguely, but the order carries neve
rtheless: a guard presses his palm to a plate on the door, a handprint reader that also determines whether the hand in question has a pulse and is the proper temperature for an extremity still attached to its owner. He simultaneously peers into a retinal scanner and utters his name aloud. The door opens with a soft pop of changing air pressure.

  “Nail him,” Pearce says.

  They enter. Coleco, a young man who has upgraded his class of suits since their last meeting, rises and extends a hand that, he hopes, conveys confidence, assertiveness, control. Concorde accepts the handshake and mutters a polite greeting, but his attention is on the man seated in a chair behind a steel table, both of which are bolted to the floor. Shackles encircle wrists and ankles alike, the cuffs linked by a cable as thick as a man’s finger and anchored to a steel ring welded to the underside of the table. His face is a mass of bruises and abrasions. One eye is swollen to the size of a golf ball, the bruised flesh a vivid, sickly purple.

  If asked, none of the Protectorate could say what they expected to find, but they expected something. An air of menace, perhaps, thick and noxious, like a strangling smog, or eyes like two black and soulless pits — at the very least a smug and defiant smirk, but all they see here is a man.

  Mindforce and Nina sit. Concorde, as is his habit, stands.

  “My client is choosing at this time to exercise his Fifth Amendment rights,” Coleco says, sitting.

  “Does your client have a name?” Mindforce asks.

  “As per his rights under the Fifth Amendment, my client is choosing to refrain from providing any information about himself.”

  “That’s a rather creative interpretation of the Fifth Amendment,” Concorde says, “but that’s okay. We have time.”

  “We have lots of time,” Nina says. “I’m sure you’ve made your client aware that he’s been denied bail. That means we can take our sweet time working with the district attorney to build a case against him.”

  “A capital case,” Mindforce adds.

  For the first time since they entered, the King of Pain reacts, if faintly, with a twitch of an eyebrow.