By no means is Dad’s life a nonstop roller coaster of thrills, but compared to all the aspects of my life that I can openly share with him, Brian Hauser is the Party God of North America — but he’s cool with that. Dull equals safe, and he likes that his girl is safe.
Daddy, I have something to tell you. It’s not going to be easy for you to hear, but I’ve been lying to you about something, something about me, and I can’t do it anymore. I just hope that you’ll understand why I kept this a secret from you, and from Mom, and accept that this is part of my life now. You know that super-hero Lightstorm? That’s me. I’m Lightstorm.
I come so close, so close to spitting all that out and ridding myself of some of the load on my shoulders. I’ve gotten good at lying. I’ve gotten to the point I can rattle off a convincing-enough cover story without thinking about it, and Mom, who has a pretty keen BS detector, never blinks. It’s a necessary evil, but God, it’s exhausting.
Edison said my parents deserve to know. He’s not wrong, but Daddy looks up from his spare ribs, a length of bone covered by a thin layer of meat that tastes like it was marinated in cough syrup, and smiles at me, and my resolve falters.
My father thinks I’m safe. I can’t take that away from him.
“Happy birthday, honey,” he says.
Yeah. Happy birthday to me.
Before I turn in for the night, I text the others and ask them to meet me at school early. I fall asleep as soon as I hit the pillow and I sleep through the night.
...And wake up feeling more wiped-out than when I went to bed. Ugh. Going to be a loooonnnnng day.
I meet Sara at her house. Right away she asks me how last night went. “I’ll tell you when we get to school,” I say.
“Oh, no. Did something happen?” Sara says.
“I’ll tell you when we get to school.”
We converge in the cafeteria, where we avail ourselves of the thin selection of pastries and bagels up for grabs (except for Stuart, who grabs a half-dozen of those god-awful breakfast slab thingies) and set up at our usual lunch table.
“So. What do you want to hear first? The good news or the bad news?” I say.
“Bad,” Stuart says. “Rip the band-aid off fast.”
“I never got to my birthday hockey game last night because Concorde had me arrested and I spent most of my night sitting in a cell in Byrne.”
It takes a few seconds for someone to break the stunned silence. “Concorde did what?” Sara says.
The eating stops as I recount my night. I know that humiliating moments, over time, lose their sting and become amusing anecdotes that one can laugh at, but let me tell you, I’m not going to be laughing about this until I’m collecting Social Security.
“Jeez, Carrie,” Matt says, “unless your good news starts with ‘Hey, you know that lottery ticket I bought?’...”
“Concorde and I had a little talk,” I say. “Okay, a huge talk, but we managed to reach an accord. I have my transponder back and the Hero Squad is officially un-grounded.”
My announcement is met with a resounding meh.
“That’s something, I suppose,” Matt says.
“Who are you and what have you done with Matt?”
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy we’re back in action, but come on. Concorde chucks you into Byrne for something you didn’t do and he thinks bribing you with your transponder makes it right?”
“Believe me, Concorde and I are miles away from square,” I say, “but we have to prioritize. Buzzkill Joy is still on the loose and she’s way overdue for a hard take-down.”
“I hear that,” Stuart says, “but we still don’t have anything to go on.”
“Maybe not. I mean, someone violated Kingsport’s airspace yesterday. Maybe that’s nothing but a wild coincidence, but I have a hunch I want to play. I want to go to the police station after school —”
“I can’t go,” Missy interrupts. “I have to go home to take care of Dad. I don’t think Mom trusts Dad to not fall down the stairs or something because his painkillers make him wicked loopy, but I didn’t want to because it’s still weird between us and I don’t know what to say with him and looking at him makes me mad.”
Nothing like another person’s misery to take your mind off your own troubles. I feel like crap for thinking it, but I’d happily sit in Byrne for a few hours than have to deal with half the garbage Missy’s dealing with.
“You do what you have to, Missy,” I say. “We’ll fill you in if we learn anything useful.”
“Yeah,” Missy says. “If.”
We’ve been in costume plenty of times and we’ve never felt self-conscious about it before, but maybe that’s been because we were too busy not getting killed to think about how we look. Sitting in the lobby of the Kingsport Police Department, waiting for the chief to meet with us, gives us plenty of time to reflect on our appearances.
“You know what I need?” Stuart says. “Something cooler than these dopey shades. I mean, yeah, I make them look good but they’re not, you know, intimidating or anything.”
“I’d lose the leather vest, too,” Matt says. “You look more like a biker than a super-hero.”
“Yeah. This thing always gets trashed anyway. Maybe I should just go bare-chested.”
“No,” Sara says. “Definitely not.”
“You got a problem with my big, manly pecs?”
“No, I have a problem with you flaunting your big, manly pecs like you were a cheap male stripper.”
“I would not be cheap.”
Chief Bronson (no lie, Chief Bronson) emerges from a door in the rear of the main lobby. We stand to greet him. We all have to look up at him because he is way tall, and he’s broader across the chest and shoulders than Sara and I standing side-by-side. He wears his hair in a crew cut, and his face is nothing but hard right angles. Everything about him screams ex-Marine.
“Sorry for the wait. I know you kids have seen some action, but I needed to know whether I could do business with you,” he says. “Concorde vouched for your team, so consider me at your disposal.”
Concorde vouched for us. I take a moment to savor that one.
“Thank you, chief,” I say. “We’re actually assisting the Protectorate with a case. Did you hear about the incident at Worcester Superior Court last week?”
“The breakout, right?”
“Yes sir. We’ve been trying to track the escapee, a juvenile offender named Joyce Morana, sometimes goes by the alias Buzzkill Joy.” Listen to me. I sound so official. “We have reason to believe she might have passed through Kingsport within the past twenty-four hours. Have you received any missing persons reports recently? Specifically, any reports of a runaway juvenile, maybe?”
Chief Bronson gestures for us to follow. He leads us around a high counter and into the dispatch room. It’s much more high-tech than I expected; each individual dispatch station boasts multiple monitors, and a giant flatscreen bearing a map of Kingsport is mounted on one wall. Blue dots indicate where every cruiser on the road is, and square word balloon thingies sprouting from each dot list the names of the officers in the cruisers. Impressive — and I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if all this tech sported Bose Industries logos.
“Rosie,” the chief says to one of the dispatchers, “run me a quick search on yesterday’s dispatcher briefs, would you? I’m looking for any juvies running off...”
“Give me a minute here,” Rosie says. A few keystrokes and mouse clicks later, she says with a roll of her eyes, “The Rialto boy took off again, but looks like that’s it.”
Chief Bronson grunts. “Sorry, guys, I think this one’s a non-starter,” he says. “This kid takes off every other week. He’s usually back a day later.”
“Wait, did you say Rialto? Isaac Rialto, by any chance?” Matt says.
“Yeah. You know him?”
“Um...could you excuse us a second?” When Matt speaks next, he calls in on the brainphone. Guys, Isaac Rialto.
Do you kn
ow him? I ask.
We went to school with him. He got expelled last year after he started a big fight in the cafeteria with Joey Meachum, this kid who hangs out with Angus and Gerry and those guys.
It was wild, Stuart says. Joey’d been bullying Isaac since kindergarten, then back in, I don’t know, last April? Isaac finally hit a boiling point and went totally apehouse on Joey.
Which was bad enough, but a teacher tried to break the fight up and Isaac turned around and wailed the crap out of him, Sara says. That was it for Isaac. He got kicked out of school pretty much that same day.
Isaac sounds like he and Joy share dispositions, but that’s a weak connection; a kid lashing out at his bully and catching a teacher in the crossfire isn’t unprecedented.
“Chief,” I say, “when was the report filed?”
Chief Bronson nods to Rosie, who does her thing. “Report came in at eighteen-twenty hours,” she says. “Isaac’s mother said her son apparently left the home earlier that day with some other kids.”
It takes me a few seconds to translate military time to civilian: 6:20 PM, four hours after Stafford picked up our mysterious flyer. Dammit, there goes another —
Wait. Other kids?
“Hold on. There’s a reference number for an earlier report from this address,” Rosie says. Type-type, click-click. “Huh. At fifteen-oh-three hours, a woman identified as Isaac’s at-home tutor called to report an assault. Three juveniles, one male, two females — victim says one of the females grabbed her from behind, she passed out, she woke up to find Isaac and the juveniles gone.”
“When did the assault — er, the alleged assault take place?” I say. C’mon, God, give me this one.
He gives it to me. “Approximately thirteen hundred hours.”
One in the afternoon.
Bingo.
“Please tell me we have something to go on,” Sara says as we leave the station.
“There are still some missing pieces, but I think I know what Joy’s up to,” I say. “I think she’s recruiting.”
“Recruiting?” Matt says. “And how did you arrive at that conclusion, Mr. Holmes?”
“Elementary, Watson,” I say humorlessly. “You said you’ve known Isaac since kindergarten. All the news stories I read about the Roxbury High Massacre said Joy was a Roxbury native. That means they didn’t know each other, yet Joy shows up at Isaac’s house yesterday, and then Isaac disappears.”
Matt cocks his head in thought. “Isaac was a test subject,” he says, “and Joy used the Project Moreau database to find him.”
“A theory that’s supported by the fact that, a half-hour after Joy knocks on Isaac’s door, Stafford gets a hit on an unauthorized flyer over Kingsport.”
“But...recruitment?” Sara says. “How do you know Joy didn’t kill Isaac?”
“Kill Isaac but leave the sole eyewitness alive? Unlikely. Besides, the police report said there were no signs of a struggle,” Matt says, “and Isaac isn’t the type to go down without a fight.”
“Unless he was overpowered. The report also said there were two other kids with Joy,” Sara counters.
“Exactly,” I say. “She’s not a solo act anymore. I think she’s been using the Project Moreau database to find other kids like her — and I don’t just mean kids with super-powers.”
“Why would Joy want to put her own team of bad guys together?” Matt says. “I doubt it’s because she’s lonely.”
“If you were a crazy superhuman who’s pissed off at the world,” I say, “what would you want?”
“If it were me?” Matt shrugs. “I’d want to get back at everyone who ever pissed me off.”
Stuart goes ashen. “Like, someone who’s kicked your ass in a fight twice?” he says, and that starts the mental dominoes falling fast and hard.
Someone who also happens to be the daughter of the man you blame for making you a crazy superhuman? Who happens to live in Kingsport, which you’d know because her name is also in the Project Moreau database?
Oh, crap...
TWENTY-SEVEN
Missy takes her time walking home. Dad’ll be fine until I get there, she tells herself. He’s an adult. He’s a genius. He can take care of himself. He doesn’t need me.
He doesn’t need me.
Whatever. I don’t need him.
As she trudges up her front walk, Missy sends her mother the briefest of texts: Home now. She pauses at the front door, hand on the knob, and reads the response: Thanx, take care f yr dad, c u 2nite.
Mom, jeez, learn to type.
She steps inside, into an assault on her every sense: a miasma of smells ranging from the tangy sting of body odor left unchecked for days, so pungent she can taste it on the air, to the subliminal scent of pheromones, male and female; the susurrus of multiple sets of lungs at work, some at a normal rate, others chugging along in an anxious pant; the almost palpable tingle of emotional energy, like an electrical charge; and the gentle brush of air as someone skulking behind the door pushes it shut.
Strangely, the visuals are the last to register. Buzzkill Joy and her father anchor the scenario. They sit in Dr. Hamill’s easy chair, Joy sprawled across her father’s lap in an obscene parody of a tender moment between parent and child. A boy, tall and heavy with muscle, looms behind them, his hands curled into fists. Three boys, one of whom looks passing familiar, and two girls stand, sit, and sprawl across the living room. All of them look ready, even eager to fight.
“Hey, cupcake,” Joy says, “how was school today? Learn anything new? I sure did. Imagine my surprise when me and my crew here break in so’s we can throw you a nice little surprise party when you get home, and I find Daddy Frankenstein walking around all alive and crap,” she says, giving Dr. Hamill a pat on the head. “He’s a lot tougher than I gave him credit for. Is that something you inherited? Or was that how he made you?”
Missy catches movement at the edge of her vision. She dares to glance back. Ivy slides into position, making of herself an impenetrable barrier between Missy and the door.
Eight against one, her father a hostage, and her friends nowhere nearby to affect a timely rescue. There is no way this ends well.
Screw it.
“Why don’t you come find out?” Missy says.
“That’s why I like you, kid,” Joy says. “You’re scrappy. Ivy?”
The floor disappears from beneath Missy’s feet. A crushing force drives the air from her lungs, pins her arms to her sides. Her will to fight remains strong but an odd euphoria swiftly overcomes her, causing the world to sway and spin. Her father calls out her name. His voice is soft, tiny, as if he were shouting at her from across a great distance, but the anguish in his voice is painful in its clarity.
“Daddy,” Missy squeaks.
Darkness falls.
“How much longer is she going to be out?” someone says.
Missy resists the impulse to open her eyes and instead puts her other senses to work. The distinct funk of unwashed bodies is still there, but it competes for dominance with less biological odors: dust, mainly, along with a hint of wood and a smell not unlike that of a new car. The acoustics are different as well; murmurs of conversation have a hollow, echoing quality, making it difficult to determine exactly where anyone is by sound alone.
“What do you care?” another boy growls.
“I don’t, but I used to go to school with her.”
Missy identifies Buzzkill Joy immediately. Few people always sound like they’re sneering when they speak. “Yeah? Did you know she was a super-hero?”
“No. Wait. She used to hang out with that weird Steiger kid, and that girl everyone said was a junkie...are they super-heroes, too?”
“Wouldn’t be surprised. We’ll ask her when she wakes up.”
“I think she is awake,” the growling boy says. “Her breathing’s different.”
Footsteps approach. Missy maintains her ruse until a hand grasps her by the hair to haul her upright, onto her knees. The pain shocks her f
ully back into the land of the living.
“Good call, Kurt,” Joy says. “Wakey-wakey, cupcakey.”
Missy looks around, at first wondering if she’s been taken to the school auditorium. A second look reveals unfinished wood paneling, exposed framework, rolls of carpeting waiting to be laid. From her vantage point on the stage, Missy can see piled against the back wall, haphazardly stacked between the two rear exits, rows of theater-style seats awaiting installation. The one who bear-hugged her into unconsciousness, Ivy, grabs a set of the interlocked seats and effortlessly carries them to the front of the auditorium floor. She sets them down on the bare concrete, about where a front row of seats would belong. Her companions excitedly fill them in, jostling and shoving each other to grab the prime seats in the center. Missy carefully notes each of Joy’s companions, starting with the skinny boy who, she decides, must be Isaac, because his is the only familiar face in the crowd. The muscular thug with the animalistic glint in his eyes — Kurt, Joy called him — sits next to Isaac, and next to him, a boy with comically wide eyes and short, bushy hair. The fourth boy, whose hands twitch uncontrollably, completes the boys’ side. The next seat becomes a buffer zone between them and the girls. One of them is thin and wiry, the other unremarkable in any apparent way — until she snaps her fingers, a nervous tic, and a small puff of flame leaps from her fingertips. Ivy chooses to stand at the end of the row rather than sit.
Kurt. Isaac. Bug-eyes. Twitchy. Skinny. Flamey. Ivy.
And Joy makes eight.
“Missy, are you all right?” her father asks. She throws a quick glance his way. He too is on the stage, on his knees, his wrists and ankles hogtied behind his back by duct tape. Missy tests her own bonds. There is no give, no resistance, and they feel cool and hard against her skin — chains, if Joy has half a brain.
Action Figures - Issue Three: Pasts Imperfect Page 24