Hopefuls (Book 1): The Private Life of Jane Maxwell

by Jenn Gott

  The next attempt was a little better. It was a beam, at least, although not quite focused enough for the input panel to accept. Then the focus was okay, but the color was off. Jane bit her lip. Her contacts felt strange in her eyes, and she was quite certain that her deodorant had stopped working somewhere around floor three.

  By the time one of the lights on the panel turned green—there were nine of them, laid out in a grid—Jane felt as if she’d been standing in this hallway forever. This was worse than every final exam ever, worse than the driver’s test that she’d had to take twice, worse than the oral presentations she’d been made to do in college, worse than her job interview at QZero.

  The rest of the Heroes shifted restlessly behind her. Jane tried not to worry about how long this was taking. She was grateful that she wasn’t wearing a watch.

  Three lights later, just as Jane was beginning to truly give up hope, just as Granite Girl swore from where she was sitting cross-legged on the floor to work on her phone, a miracle happened: the rest of the panel lit up green, one and then the next and then the next. The speed of it unlocking sounded like a slot machine on a winning spin: jackpot!

  Jane’s mouth dropped open, a soft “oh!” of alarm escaping her. Nobody heard it, though—the instant that the door unlocked, they’d rushed up behind her, and the bars clanged to the floor. They shoved Jane back, creating a barricade between her and the dangers waiting just on the other side of the door. Jane let them, retreating on shaky legs.

  They threw the door open. Sight unseen, Windforce sent a strong gust crashing into the hallway beyond.

  It was a good thing that he did, because it turns out that the hall was packed with Shadow Raptors. The wind was a good start to hold them back, but it wouldn’t last long, and so Granite Girl crashed headfirst into the fray, like a bowling ball through pins. Shadow Raptors toppled, scrambling to regain their footing. Pixie Beats and Deltaman closed ranks, fists flying as they held back the Shadow Raptors at the entrance.

  Rip-Shift wasted no time, either. As soon as Granite Girl had barreled in, he began slicing rips beneath the feet of the Shadow Raptors. They tumbled through, falling out of a corresponding rip hovering in the middle of the stairwell. The wail of the Shadow Raptors echoed off the bare walls. Their tails and claws whipped out in an effort to find purchase on something. Jane flinched back, and Mindsight shielded her as the first of the Shadow Raptors from the hall managed to burst free of Deltaman and Pixie Beats’s blockade.

  This was all so much more than Jane had ever pictured it. The crack of Mindsight’s gun and the shrieking of the Shadow Raptors and the shouts of the Heroes and the whistle of the wind and the smell of blood and gunpowder jamming up her nose so hard it made her gag. Jane felt the edge of the panels closing in around her, packed tight with explosive bursts of color.

  And then everything cut away—the chaos and the noise, the smell, the terror—as a Shadow Raptor leaped up from the stairwell, landing on the railing in front of Jane. It must have caught itself as it fell from Rip-Shift’s rip, vaulting with an impressive display of acrobatics. Its claws dug into the metal of the railing, scarring the paint.

  For a moment, everything was still.

  Jane felt the breath that filled her. The expanse of her lungs, the way it straightened her spine, drew back her shoulders. It whispered to her, do it, do it, do it, and Jane did not think, she just did.

  She saw the beam of light that shot from her fingertips. Watched it strike the Shadow Raptor, watched the beast tip backward until it fell. A flood of euphoria swallowed Jane, and she let it propel her forward. She did not think. Another shot opened up, farther up the stairs, and she took it. Then another. Another. The Heroes parted around Jane, folding her into their midst as if she belonged.

  “Go, go, go!” someone shouted a moment later, and they charged. Straight up the last step, through the open door. Granite Girl and Rip-Shift had managed to largely clear the hall, and it was all the opening that the Heroes needed. They poured in. Pixie Beats shrank and expanded, leaping from walls and crashing into Shadow Raptors. Windforce threw Shadow Raptors through Rip-Shift’s newest rips, the exit still hovering deadly in the stairwell. Mindsight’s revolver cracked behind them, taking care of any stragglers that managed to claw their way back up. Granite Girl charged ahead, crashing through windows and over conference tables in the meeting rooms that lined the hall. Deltaman swept through, a dark and ominous phantom.

  And Jane . . .

  Jane laughed. Her powers flowed like water, singing a joyful tune in her ears. The Shadow Raptors became target practice, and though her aim wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t terrible, either. Each time she struck a blow, it was like a little piece inside of her shone brighter—like a portion of her mind cleared, nothing but pure light in the space where her worries used to be. What did it matter, then, if they were in danger? What was danger, in the face of this? What was care, what was sorrow, what was grief? Jane felt their absence like a weight finally taken from her shoulders, like shackles finally removed from her ankles. She laughed and shot and spun like a school girl on the playground, arms outstretched. She was searching for her next attack. Because surely there had to be another, surely that wasn’t it, surely she wasn’t done, they couldn’t be done, she may never be done—

  Her attention landed on another figure, and Jane raised her hands, ready to go, but it wasn’t a Shadow Raptor.

  Mindsight was staring at her.

  Jane jerked herself back. “I wasn’t—” she started to say, but a crash drew their attention.

  They had finally reached the mayor’s office. Granite Girl lifted a Shadow Raptor, injured but alive, and threw it through the doors. They cracked apart, flying inward.

  There was no time to lose. The Heroes charged in as a pack—and stumbled to a halt, bottlenecked in the open doorway.

  “Not so brash now, are you?” UltraViolet asked them.

  Jane swallowed, trying to clear the tangled lump knotting up her throat.

  UltraViolet stood in front of the mayor’s desk, and she was not alone. Somehow, despite his ill state, she had managed to prop the mayor up in front of her. She had the scruff of his shirt collar caught tight in her fist, and a gun to his sweaty, green-tinged temple. His eyes were half-open, rolling back in his head more often than not. But he was trying to look at them, and for a moment Jane could have sworn that he was trying to look at her.

  Standing there, covered in sweat, shaking as he leaned against UltraViolet, he didn’t look like Mayor Maxwell anymore—the man whose picture she’d seen plastered all over the news, the man who smiled out of frames in her mother’s office, the legendary figure who had brought about a record low unemployment rate to Grand City.

  Now Jane saw her dad.

  And not even the one that she was angry with. That one was a tower of vigor and vitality: a gym-rat, obsessed with his image, who had taken up parasailing during his last trip to Maui. The person in front her now was nothing like that. This version, reduced, had rolled back time. This version was the one that had helped Jane learn to ride a bike, telling her stories about all the places he used to go on his own bike as a child, as he held fast to her seat and ran behind her. This version was the one that had gone with her to Girl Scout father-daughter dances, both of them drinking too much punch and proudly dancing the hokey-pokey to every song, because it’s the only moves they knew. This version was the one that took her to a baseball game when she was nine, because she’d just watched a movie about Jackie Robinson in school and thought for about a summer that maybe she would become an athlete. This version was the one that used to make her mother laugh, that remembered Jane’s birthdays, that carried her on his shoulders when she was too tired to walk.

  Forget the others: this one was dying.

  Jane pushed her way to the front of the pack.

  “Captain!” Mindsight hissed, but Deltaman held her back. “No,” Deltaman muttered. “Let her do this.”

  UltraViolet cocked her
head. Waiting. In person, her shimmering haze was even more distracting than it was in the video. Jane’s head hurt just to look at her, but that didn’t matter. Jane made herself look, made herself plant her feet wide, square her shoulders.

  Power stirred in her mind. Her fingers were tickling so much that she wanted to rip at the skin with her nails. Do it, do it, do it, do it.

  “Let him go,” Jane said.

  UltraViolet laughed. “Or what?”

  Do it, do it, do it, do it.

  Jane licked her dry lips. She felt her fingers twitch, stallions ready to burst free of the gate.

  Could she, though? That was the one test that she hadn’t yet been put through. It was one thing to use her abilities against a lab-grown beast, mindless, one copy of many. How far was Jane willing to go against a person, though?

  How far was she even capable of?

  Do it, do it, do it, do it.

  “Well, Captain?” UltraViolet said. Her voice pitched low, challenging. “Whatcha gonna do to stop me?”

  Jane narrowed her eyes. Her arm thrust forward before she’d made up her mind to do it. She saw the moment, frozen in time: drawn from behind, the side of her head and her shoulder framing the lower corner of the panel. The reader’s line of sight follows the long stretch of Captain Lumen’s arm, her iconic red uniform made brighter by the flash erupting from her fingertips.

  The beam was both stronger and more highly focused than anything Jane had managed to conjure so far. It cut a straight path over UltraViolet’s head, just barely missing her—yet UltraViolet did not duck, did not even flinch. She turned to study the wall, and the painting upon it, which had received the brunt of Jane’s attack. A smoldering hole was burned through the canvas, bits of teal and yellow curling in the middle of the frame.

  Jane gasped. She yanked her hand back, as if she’d been caught in a fire. Her stomach pitched as the smell of rage and smoke drifted through the office.

  UltraViolet turned back to Jane. A single smirk emerged through the flicker of her distortion, gone as fast as it had appeared.

  A chill swept over Jane, chasing the last of her powers back to wherever they’d come from. This whole thing felt wrong, suddenly, like she’d just woken up from sleepwalking to find herself in the middle of a dark woods. If she didn’t know any better, she’d say that UltraViolet had wanted this—but surely that was ridiculous . . . wasn’t it?

  There was no time to consider it. UltraViolet straightened up, dragging the mayor even higher on his feet. “Very well!” she said, her voice carrying as if she was on the steps of City Hall making a statement to the press. “You want your mayor so much? Have him!”

  She threw Jane’s dad forward.

  All of the Heroes advanced as one, but it was Jane that caught him, just before he tumbled to the floor. The haze of a purple smoke bomb stung at Jane’s eyes, and she did not need anyone to tell her that UltraViolet had disappeared.

  Never mind that—UltraViolet was a problem for another time. Mayor Maxwell was a dead weight in her arms, and Jane staggered as she laid him on the floor as gently as she could. His breathing was shallow, hitching in his chest with each inhale.

  Jane brushed some of the sweat from his forehead, his skin oddly cold beneath her touch. Her promise to Allison rang through her head, but what good did it do? Look at him: he was clearly dying.

  Jane looked up, desperately searching the Heroes’ faces. “Somebody do something!”

  “Paramedics are on their way,” Granite Girl said.

  “What good is that? We need the antidote!”

  Granite Girl threw her hands up. “Yeah, well, we don’t have it! Maybe, if UltraViolet hadn’t escaped, we’d have some idea of where to look, but—”

  Deltaman’s hand landed on Granite Girl’s shoulder. Granite Girl clamped her mouth shut, a perfect line carved in stone.

  “Okay, but there’s got to be something else,” Deltaman said. He turned to the rest of the team. “There’s always something else. Think, people! What else do we have to work with?”

  “Nothing,” Granite Girl said. “There’s nothing to work with. All we have is an office full of hostages, and dead Shadow Raptors.”

  The taste of bile crept up the back of Jane’s mouth. She got up and stepped away, unable to look at Mayor Maxwell any longer. Instinctively, Jane found herself searching out Mindsight.

  They had been so busy arguing that nobody noticed Mindsight break off from the rest of the group. By the time Jane spotted her, she was in the hallway, almost out of view, crouched beside one of UltraViolet’s Shadow Raptors.

  One of her gloves was off.

  “Mindsight?”

  But Mindsight didn’t look up. She stared at the creature, focused as if steeling herself for something.

  Deltaman glanced over, drawn by Jane’s distraction. The argument that he was making to the others died on his lips, as an understanding of the situation hit him before anyone else.

  “Mindsight, stop!” he called, too late.

  Mindsight cupped the Shadow Raptor’s cheek.

  In the world of Jane’s comics, it’s called a flare.

  There’s some nonsense science to explain it, something that Jane picked Devin’s brain about when she was first writing up the proposal scripts for QZero. The science doesn’t matter. In essence, a flare is a hyperstimulated version of the Heroes’ powers. It can be caused by a lot of things: stress, sometimes, or overtaxing your powers, or pushing yourself too far, too fast, when learning a new facet of your abilities. It was one of the reasons why Cal’s training sessions focused only about half on Jane’s budding powers, and half on standard self-defense and combat. Once in a while, the dastardly villains of the comics would also use techno-gizmos to cause the Heroes to flare on purpose, harnessing their abilities, siphoning off their powers . . .

  Or, in Mindsight’s case, attempting to duplicate their personality by taking over her consciousness.

  Jane had never understood why Clair insisted that this was the ultimate height of Mindsight’s powers. It’s not that she didn’t get the idea of absorbing the essence of another person—but why, she’d asked time and time again, did it have to mean that Mindsight was subsumed, the new personality wholly taking root?

  “It just does,” Clair used to say, as if the matter was settled.

  In fairness, the issue where this was revealed was a huge success. Mindsight was nearly overtaken by the essence of a villain named Dark Atom, already a fan favorite. The issue sold out, and the fandom exploded with arguments about how this weakness might play out in future storylines.

  Of course, by itself, physical contact between Mindsight and another person doesn’t necessarily cause a flare. Certainly little touches don’t, and even a full grip is not enough to do it.

  But this wasn’t exactly a person. Grown in the lab, first to do the bidding of Doctor Demolition and then overtaken by UltraViolet, a Shadow Raptor was barely even a proper life form. Tapping into its mind would push Mindsight’s powers beyond normal—and a flare, even without the threat of being subsumed by another personality, could easily turn deadly.

  A scream ripped itself from Jane’s throat as she ran forward. Not “stop!” or “no!” or even “Amy!”, this was deeper and more primal than any coherent thought. She surged toward Mindsight, but a pair of strong hands grabbed her from behind.

  “Don’t!” Deltaman said. He pulled her close even as she fought against him, holding her against his wall of a chest. “Interrupting a deep empathic link can be fatal, remember?”

  Jane did remember (she’d written it, after all—an issue where they’d seen a terrible future, the destruction of everything they’d worked for), but the memory only came to her now that he’d said it. The difference between knowing something from a book, and knowing it in your heart.

  That knowledge, however, did not make it easier to stand there and watch it happen. From the outside, perhaps, it was nothing flashy: Mindsight’s hand on the Shadow Raptor’s
scaled cheek, leaning over it as if ready to whisper all of her secrets. There were no fancy special effects, no swirling lights or wobbly shimmers like Jane might have drawn. And Amy’s face, hidden by her Mindsight persona, did not appear to anyone else in the room to be displaying any particular level of distress.

  Only a wife would see it.

  Jane saw it. The subtle tightening of Amy’s jaw, the grinding of her teeth. It was a look that Clair used to have sometimes after waking up from a nightmare, as she’d gotten out of bed for a cooling glass of water and to pop a few frozen grapes. She never liked to talk about her nightmares, so Jane had to learn how to read the unspoken emotions in the focus of her eyes and the smoothed-out wrinkles of her brow.

  Hidden pain coursed through Mindsight’s face as she searched the Shadow Raptor’s mind. Then, with a gasp like she was coming up for air, it was done. She dropped her hold, falling to her side, and Jane ripped herself from Deltaman’s grip to rush to her.

  “Amy?” Jane whispered as she tucked the short strands of Mindsight’s hair behind her ear, surreptitiously checking her temperature as she did so. “Are you all right?”

  Mindsight nodded. “I’m okay. I’ll—I’ll be okay.” She looked up. “There’s a vial of antidote in the mayor’s desk—top drawer, left. The rest of it is in the basement. Records room. Two Shadow Raptors on guard.”

  Nobody needed to tell the team to spring into action. Before Mindsight had even finished talking, Pixie Beats was at the mayor’s desk; she rummaged for only a moment before shouting, “Got it!” and tossing a vial to Deltaman, who caught it with ease. Rip-Shift had swatted Windforce’s shoulder, and the two of them were off, heading no doubt for the records room, as Deltaman rolled up Mayor Maxwell’s sleeve to administer the antidote. The whole thing was clockwork, a collaborative dance born of years of choreography.

  Jane had no place in it, not yet, not anymore, and so she did the only thing that she could. “Stay here,” she said to Mindsight. She rushed down the hall, searching out a water cooler that she’d thought she spotted earlier in the chaos.