by Jenn Gott
People change, she heard Cal say, but Jane shook her head.
“It is urgent,” Mayor Maxwell said. He shifted, sitting up higher in his hospital bed, as if the full brunt of what he had to say had finally come back to him again. He paused just long enough to retrieve his glasses from where they were resting on the bedside table, right next to a paper cup of water.
Jane shut her eyes, trying not to think about the bedside table that she’d always had to sneak past when entering her parents’ room as a child, in the middle of the night after she’d had a bad dream or wet the bed. The glasses, the water, the book with its pages folded in to mark their place.
“The city is in terrible danger,” Mayor Maxwell continued, drawing Jane back to the situation at hand.
Deltaman raised his hand. “It’s okay—the antidote is already being distributed.”
“No, not that. Listen to me: I heard things, while I was being held captive. They thought that I was so far gone because of the sickness, but I had my moments of clarity. This whole thing . . . it was just a distraction. UltraViolet never had any intention of killing everyone, not this time anyway.”
Back at headquarters, the room took a collective breath. Amy snuck a fast glance at Jane, but Jane was staring at the screen, glued to what was playing out.
“I’m listening,” Deltaman said.
“The weapon that destroyed Woolfolk Tower was a test. UltraViolet is building another, large enough to wipe out the entire city. While you were busy saving us, a robbery was taking place. Wilson Labs.”
“On it,” Marie said. The message was transmitted to a discreet earpiece, and Deltaman waited for more information before replying to Mayor Maxwell.
Marie sat down and typed quickly on a laptop, accessing the Heroes’ central database. She grimaced as the information she’d been looking for popped up.
“Confirmed,” Marie said. “Though it seems that Wilson Labs isn’t exactly keen for anyone to know. The police weren’t notified of the crime, and the only record of it was logged as a false-alarm glitch of the lab’s security system.”
“Do you know what they took?” Deltaman asked. The question was both for Mayor Maxwell, and for Marie, through the earpiece.
Mayor Maxwell shook his head. “They didn’t say.”
“Oh, well, that’s helpful,” Marie muttered, as the sound of her typing revved up once more. She tapped her own earpiece. “Cal? The alarm was triggered in their Research and Development department, at the Experimental Sciences vault.” A nervous laugh tinged her voice as she added, “So that’s not disturbing at all.”
“We’ll handle it,” Deltaman told the mayor and the team both. His voice was deeper than normal, full of confidence in the Heroes’ ability. Jane didn’t know if it would necessarily convince the mayor—her own father was notoriously difficult to impress—but Jane could feel the tension level of the group around her lower just a fraction as determination replaced fear.
She couldn’t help but feel that, between the two of them, he really was the better leader of the group—collected, organized, unflappable. Granted, Jane didn’t know what this world’s Jane was like, but by contrast Jane herself was a trembling leaf, just barely hanging on. She looked around the room, at the faces of their team, grateful that there was someone capable to step up and fill the void that her double had left behind.
It was a good thing that she was leaving tomorrow. Because one thing was clear to her, now more than ever: she would never be a proper replacement for Captain Lumen.
* * *
“Have time for a coffee before you go?”
Jane paused. She was halfway through twisting her damp hair into a ponytail. Amy had found her as soon as Jane had stepped out of her suite, the morning sunlight pooling into the hall. The timing was too perfect to be coincidental.
“Is this where you take me somewhere, seemingly innocuous, but in fact you’ve got this big speech ready to pull at my heart strings so I’ll agree to stay?”
A blush tinted the tops of Amy’s cheeks. “Would it make a difference?”
“No,” Jane said, as she finished her hair and dropped her hands. “I’m sorry, but . . . really, no.”
This had started the night before. Just after the meeting between Deltaman and Mayor Maxwell. The screen had gone dark as Cal returned to base, and one by one, the sets of eyes had turned to settle on Jane.
Immediately, she’d put her hands up. “Oh, no. I’ve done my part.”
It didn’t take a genius to work it out: the last time Doctor Demolition’s weapon had threatened Grand City, Captain Lumen was the key to defeating it. Just because they hadn’t arrived in time didn’t mean that the plan wasn’t sound. Now, with no Captain Lumen . . . it only made sense for them to turn to, in their words, “the next best thing.”
It should have been flattering.
It wasn’t.
So now they were resorting to emotional blackmail. Jane couldn’t fault them for this, but that didn’t mean that she had to go along with it like a pig to the slaughter.
She brushed her way past Amy—not unkindly—and headed for the kitchen. She’d written this place to have a wicked kitchen, with a piece of tech that they’d stolen from the future that could whip up just about anything you were craving in twenty seconds flat, and she was eager to see if it existed in real life.
Real life. Jane frowned, shaking her head as she walked. Since when did she start thinking of this place as real?
Amy followed. As Jane knew she would. Her footsteps were light in Jane’s wake, a careful tread that said more than words ever could.
“I’m not going to change my mind,” Jane called over her shoulder.
“Oh, I know,” Amy said. “I just haven’t eaten yet, either.”
It was a lovely lie, though easily spotted. Which meant that Amy wasn’t even trying to convince Jane, which meant that she had some other plan up her sleeve, which meant . . .
The rest of the Heroes were waiting for Jane in the kitchen.
“Seriously?”
Cal was fast to his feet. “We’re not trying to make you do anything you don’t want to do—”
“Oh, bullshit,” Jane said. “Goddammit.”
“We have a proposal,” Keisha said.
“One that’s very reasonable,” Devin said.
“Even for you,” Marie said.
Jane threw her hands up. Cal blocked her path, his broad chest creating a barrier.
“Cal.”
“Jane.”
Jane pinched her nose. “Can you at least let me get to the fucking cereal cabinet before you ambush me?” She didn’t even care about elaborate meals anymore, not if this was going to be her morning.
Slowly, so slowly, Cal moved aside. Jane didn’t know what he was so worried about—Amy was already blocking the closest exit. Jane muttered to herself as she crossed the kitchen. She found a bowl, a spoon. Some milk. She had finally figured out what the point of milk was, several months ago. Their cereal selection was shit, mostly sugar-bombed frosted fruit puffs with chocolate and marshmallows, but hidden in the back was a box of the blandest bran flakes.
She poured herself a bowl. Jane grounded herself in the images of her routine: her hands, framed from counter height, as she rips a banana from its cluster; her back as she rummages in the fridge, light stealing out around her and turning her into a silhouette. One shot of her face, eyes and mouth both level and tugged just to the side, where the readers can see the blocky colors that outline where her so-called “friends” are gathered behind her.
There was no way that she was going to say “yes.”
She was totally going to say “yes,” wasn’t she?
“No,” she said, as she turned around. Milk sloshed, threatening to topple a slice of banana and several bran flakes from her overfilled bowl. She hooked a chair with her ankle, and sat without ceremony. “I’m just telling you that now, so that we know where we stand. I’ll listen. But I’m saying ‘no.’ ”
“We’re not asking you to risk your life,” Cal said. As usual, the leader of the group. He sat across from her, the whole kitchen gleaming white and spotless around them. Even the table, round and sixties-retro, was white, with stupid little egg chairs that required far more balance than they had any right to.
Jane crunched. She didn’t look at Cal. She didn’t look at any of them. Her bowl; the cereal. Banana slices, slimy in the overhead light.
“What we’re asking you to do is just to stick around. For a little while. Until we can figure out a better option.”
“You mean until you can guilt me into doing your bidding.”
Dammit, she wasn’t going to say anything. She frowned. Why had she said something? She tried to reduce her world: she was the only thing in her panel, just her and her cereal bowl.
Crunch.
Not my problem, a square, thought-bubble box said beside her head.
“Marie is going to try to replicate Captain Lumen’s power artificially,” Cal continued. He was clearly working from a script, and Jane wondered how long he’d spent rehearsing his lines in the bathroom. That was what he’d have done if he really was Captain Lumen, anyway—Jane tried to write some vulnerability into him, whenever she could.
Crunch.
Nope.
“And we’re going to redouble our efforts at finding our Jane. There’s really every reason to believe that one of these options will pan out, long before you would—long before anything would actually happen.”
Crunch.
Jane’s head tipped down, and her eyes moved up. She looked at Cal heavily over the tops of her glasses. “You should have practiced longer,” she said. She pointed at him with her spoon, then quickly pulled it back to lick a flake off the gentle curve.
Cal’s jaw tightened. “Look, Jane—”
“Why don’t you just pop to another universe?” Jane asked. She dug her spoon through her cereal. “I mean, you have the tech, right? So find another Jane, someone that already has the right powers—bam, there you go. Problem solved.”
She knew that it couldn’t be this simple—that if was, they’d have already put the plan in motion. Still, if they were going to ask this of her, she was going to be damned sure that there wasn’t another way. Any other way.
Not that she would agree, even so. But.
All the same.
In the end, it was Marie that answered first. She sighed. “We . . . don’t know how.”
Jane snorted. “Of course not.”
“Look, it’s complicated, all right? I didn’t invent these things.”
“No, you just use them to kidnap people and force them to help you.”
“Jane,” Cal said. “It’s not like that.”
“It’s exactly like that!” Jane threw her spoon down. Milk leapt from her bowl, splashing on the table. “Look at it from my perspective! I’ve gone along with your stupid schemes, I played the part, and it’s still not enough. You’re supposed to be superheroes. Can’t you just find some other way? Hack a computer and track down who’s been buying purple lipstick, or something?”
“Jane—”
“Forget it,” Jane said, because she knew that her arguments wouldn’t do any good. She picked her spoon back up, shoved more cereal into her mouth so that she didn’t have to talk anymore. Tears stung at the corner of her eyes. Dammit, didn’t any of them understand? They’d all chosen this life. They’d all felt some stirring, deep in their soul—a calling to do good, to rise up, to be more. You couldn’t just throw that at a person, and expect them to be grateful for it.
That’s not how heroes were made.
“What if we give you the device?” Amy said finally. “And that way, you can leave any time you want to.”
The kitchen fell silent. Even Jane’s crunching had stopped.
Jane watched the room. Most of the Heroes were within her line of sight, and she took inventory of their reactions. So they really had been planning to keep her here, then. Regardless of what she said, regardless of whether or not she liked it. That was good to know.
The scrape of a kitchen chair. Jane turned, addressing the only person that mattered anymore.
Amy was framed by the closed door behind her. Perfectly centered, perfectly poised. To either side was nothing but clear counters, the surfaces aligned with the hands folded in front of her. She was the only point of color Jane could see, but oh, there was so much color. Peaches and browns and the flecks of green of her eyes. Blue fingerless gloves with swirls of green and purple, like a night frozen in a northern hell. Yellow pants of spring, her green shirt blooming above them. A necklace . . .
Jane swallowed. She’d bought that necklace for Clair. Shortly before they were married, they’d found it in an antique store. Folded glass in an abstract origami, expertly crafted.
If UltraViolet was allowed to continue, that necklace might be shattered. Amy could easily get caught up in the explosion, snuffed out as swiftly as Clair.
Now here she was, asking for help.
What else could Jane do?
“You know that I can’t stop it, right?” Jane asked. “I mean . . . I’ve barely scraped the surface of Captain Lumen’s powers. I’m still playing with visible light. Widening the range into infrared would be hard enough, but wireless signals?” She shook her head. “There’s just no way.”
There. It wasn’t a “yes.”
It could never be a “yes.”
But as Amy smiled, warm and reassuring, filling Jane’s heart to bursting, there fell between them the simple truth: it also wasn’t a “no.”
For now, at least, that was really all the Heroes needed.
* * *
Jane drew a montage.
Marie holed up in her lab: a portrait of her face, her lip scrunched up and caught between her teeth, her eyes narrowed in concentration; the straps of her safety goggles muss with her hair, and she’s soldering something on a teeny-tiny circuit board that she holds in front of her. Behind her, you can see whiteboards filled with equations, gadgets half-completed, a spaceman helmet with golden wings and several wires sticking out of its neck as if it is still being worn by an android head, now severed from its body. A basil plant sits under a sunlamp near her elbow. In one panel she works, in the next she is downing an entire bottle of water, the next she works. Over and over and over.
Tony, in a police uniform at his GCPD precinct: in one panel, first, he chats amiably with Captain Daniels, then in the next something on the captain’s desk catches his eye. In the next he’s at his desk, watching in the reflection of his computer monitor as Captain Daniels puts on his coat, preparing to leave the office. Tony reaches underneath his desk, slices open a breach in reality, slices another through the open door of Captain Daniels’s office. He reaches through the rip and takes the file, then slides it into the laptop bag by his feet.
Keisha as Pixie Beats, out on patrol: she is small as a mouse in a city packed with feet and coffee cups. She sneaks through the world, listening to conversations in bars and bathroom stalls and boardrooms. Some panels show her running through passages of duct work or along a railing of the subway; others are almost a game of Where’s Waldo?, her uniform the tiniest splash of color in a sea of chaos, like a flower lost on the street.
Cal in a leather jacket and dark jeans: he’s gone to a dive bar, someplace where they have contacts with the criminal underworld. In a corner, in the shadows, he slips money to a man with wide eyes and too many teeth. Literally too many teeth—he’s not from this world, and his narrow, spiked incisors are laced with poison. He flashes them in a grin at Cal; Jane imagines that this creature has fancied Cal from a distance for years, that it’s this reason that causes him to cooperate with the Heroes.
Windforce, soaring over Grand City: carried by currents, his blue-and-white wingsuit blen
ds into patches of cloud and clear sky. His full-face spandex mask is broken up only by the reflective lens of his goggles, cutting a wide swath across his face. The goggles reflect the city below, the gleaming buildings, the paths jammed with traffic. Later, the stretch of suburbs, the industrial grime, the open span of fields and trees. He loops out beyond the edges of Grand City, circles back, loops out again.
Mindsight.
There is only one panel of Mindsight. Crouched in an empty parking lot that is surrounded by buildings on all sides. Fences block most of it off, but one is twisted, a broken gap allowing access. Cigarette butts and joint stubs litter broken pavement and puddles and oil patches. Mindsight traces her fingers along the ground, her eyes closed, her face frozen in concentration. Graffiti looms large on a wall behind her, overlapping messages of anger and joy and rebellion.
The pages surrounded Jane. In a tiny corner of the Heroes’ headquarters, she made a space her own. Not Captain Lumen’s room, not anybody’s room. It was a junction between corridors, and so nobody could object as Jane dragged in a table and set herself up. She bought paper, pencils, paints. Most of her work at QZero was done on the computer, by necessity, but Jane had always preferred working with the old methods. There was something soothing about the scritch of a pencil, the resistance of the paper when she erased something. The smell of paint. The smudge of ink. Swirls became shapes became people. Jane finished each piece and taped it to the wall above her workspace, then moved on to the next one.
Now a blank sheet lay in front of her. She stretched out her fingers, working cramps from her knuckles in turn. It was long past time for a break, but stretching was all that Jane had allowed herself. Her shoulders screamed at her, and she ignored them. Her arms were heavy with effort, and she willed them forward.
Most of her pages were planned well in advance. Certainly for the real issues. Binders full of notes and loose scribbles would give her a framework to build on, as she tried out one pose, one arrangement, then another, then another. By the time she sat down at her tablet at her desk to compose the final page, she could close her eyes and see exactly what she was going for.