Superheroes In Denim

by Lee French

Paul made a small noise of discomfort beside him and pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead. Liam snapped his head to Kaitlin and watched tension seize her shoulders. Paul was a precognitive vision detector, apparently.

  “No,” Kaitlin said as she relaxed, “we don’t want to go there. We need to go someplace else. Riker, does ‘Adelphi’ ring any bells for you?”

  “That’s where the Army Research Lab is based. A couple of the cars that come and go from this site have parking stickers for it.”

  “That must be it, then.” Kaitlin turned around in her seat and fixed Liam with a square look. “She’s there, I know it.”

  Dear God, he thought, let it be true and a lie. “What—” His voice cracked enough that he had to cough to clear his throat and start over again. “Is she okay?”

  “She’s alive, I can say that much for sure. Her condition—” Kaitlin pursed her lips. “What I see, it’s going to happen unless we change something, but there’s no way to know if we’re actually changing something or doing what will make the thing happen, not unless I can see a cause-effect chain with a link I can break. Like, I saw a car crash for Lisa once, so I told her not to get in the car, but I couldn’t have said whether it mattered if she got in the car and chose a different destination, or left an hour later, or anything like that. All I could see was that if she got in the car, she was going to die.”

  Liam nodded. He tried not to think about the ramifications of someone having that kind of ability, because he wasn’t interested in examining his beliefs and feelings about religion and predestination and the rest of it right now. Elena made him want to believe in God wholeheartedly, if only so he had someone to properly thank for nudging her into his life. “Just tell me. I need to know.”

  Kaitlin left a long pause—long enough to make him want to grab her and shake until the words fell out—before she said, “She’s working for them, using a computer a lot. She’s about to stumble across something she doesn’t understand and take it to her boss. Whatever it is, he tries to get her to just ignore it, but she won’t, because it has your name in it. He—” She turned away, settled back in her seat properly again. “It all goes downhill from there. In a bad way. But they aren’t going to kill her.”

  Someone seized his heart and squeezed, trying to crush it. “Okay,” Liam heard himself say in a strangely distant voice. Part of him panicked. The rest tried to think of a way to get around whatever awful thing Kaitlin had seen happening to her. “Then we should hurry. I can call someone, get reinforcements or other help.”

  “Who’re you going to call? The Ghostbusters?” Kaitlin snorted to further express her disdain for his idea. “We’ve got Riker and his guys, they can get us into the facility. Paul can do his thing. I’d rather not go in, but the alternative is standing around by myself, which probably isn’t a good idea.”

  Paul put a hand on Liam’s shoulder. “We’ll get her out,” he said softly. “We’ll be in time. I’ll do whatever we need to make sure it happens.” Turning to Riker, he said, “Put the pedal to the metal. I’ll handle any cops that take an interest.”

  He’d do anything to get her free—anything at all. If the rest of these people wanted to get dragged down with him, that was their choice. He wouldn’t force them. He wouldn’t turn them away or try to run off without them, either. Seriously, he was about to break into a military research facility. He needed all the help he could get.

  Chapter 3

  Bobby headed for White Sands, Liam’s phone number on a slip of paper in his pocket. His gut said Groom Lake was more likely, but the Missile Range had unfinished business, of a sort, and he wanted to finish it. It was dark when he flew over the main clump of buildings at White Sands. The place had enough streetlights that the dragons could see just fine where to go, and they dove into the ventilation system. Just because he didn’t have much ability with a computer didn’t mean he couldn’t find anything. This entire place would be checked over, inside and out, and nothing was going to stop him. If Elena was here, he’d find her.

  The swarm spread out, as it had in those small towns in Afghanistan. Freaky nightmares aside, that felt like it happened a lifetime ago, even though only about two weeks had passed. Here, no space would be left unexplored with them on the job, and Bobby waited for them to get it done. The only things he cared about right now were finding Elena and not being noticed, though he did make a point to be really clear about how no one should be attacked or killed.

  While they worked, he floated in the middle, trying not to let either the dead stares of those kids or Sebastian’s wailing replay in his head. The first one he couldn’t do anything about except deal with it. As for the second… He should have pushed harder for him and his momma to get freed, though he could well imagine they’d be under more intense security than him. After all, he’d only been a thorn in Privek’s side. Lily had proved they could pass the eyes—and maybe their superpowers—on to children.

  At least this time, he’d been awakened on purpose by someone without a grand plan beyond finding a girl. If Privek had set this up somehow, he’d done it to mess with Liam and Paul, not him. To heckbiscuits with Privek. No way he gave everyone at that house in Virginia instructions on how to deal with that kind of questioning just in case someone showed up and asked about Elena. Actually, now he thought about that, it was possible. Sounded like an awful lot of excessive paranoia, though. Privek hadn’t displayed that before. Instead, he’d carried out plans and reacted.

  His dragons found a lot of sleeping people, but none of them were pretty Spaniards. None of the awake people were Elena, either. The foray didn’t take long, and he sent the swarm out to check on the outbuildings, several structures scattered about the rest of the base. Each of them was set up with a fair amount of security and intended for a different project. He knew this from his last visit.

  For the sake of being thorough, he sent them through both the Maze Beset buildings, knowing he’d find one empty. The other one not only had been where they’d met Mike, but also housed a project trying to recreate some kind of space-time thingumbobbadoodle. Stephen and Sam understood it better than he did. Actually, probably everyone understood it better than he did.

  Speaking of that Mike guy, one dragon found him. He sat in the break room with a sandwich, reading a book with no one else around. Guy must not have any friends. Maybe that was why he had been willing to follow Sam out instead of calling security to haul her off. Bobby figured introducing himself ranked low on the list of Intelligent Things To Do. Mike might know something, though, or hear something later and be willing to pass it along.

  Bobby jumped into the dragon and landed it on the table. Engrossed in his book, Mike failed to notice it. He had the dragon tap a claw on the table, then chirp.

  “What’s…” Mike lowered his book. “Oh my God. Um, Sam? Are you here?” His eyes darted all around expectantly.

  The swarm converged on the room while Mike watched, his mouth falling into an ‘o’ shape. Bobby re-formed and held up his hand in greeting, pointedly not smirking. The one dragon flew to him and merged onto the end of his thumb. “Hi there. Sam ain’t here.” Since Mike obviously thought of her, he decided to follow that bone. “She’s in trouble, actually, which is why I’m here. I need your help.”

  Mike hesitated for only one second before he grabbed his book firmly and stood up straight and tall. Bobby got the feeling he’d march off to storm Fort Knox if he thought he’d find Sam trapped inside. The reaction seemed over the top, but who was he to judge what a guy would do for a girl after only meeting her once? “What happened? What can I do?”

  “Can we talk private-like in here without worrying about nobody coming in?”

  Mike scanned the room, as if he had to check for other people. “Yeah, everyone’s gone for the day. I’m just running some test routines.”

  “Great.” Bobby gestured and Mike sat down again with him. “My name’s Bobby. I’m made of tiny little dragons. Sam’s got a special ability, too. The
re’s thirty-five of us in all, and there’s somebody trying to mess with us. Doing a pretty good job of it, too. Sam and bunch of the others are locked up right now, and I’m working on getting ‘em free. In order to do that, I gotta understand what all’s going on.”

  He had Mike’s rapt attention. “Were you all born like this?”

  “That there is a pickle of a question. Suffice to say that we all been developing these abilities all sudden-like over the past few months. Don’t rightly know why now. Don’t much matter, neither. I gotta figure out the future, not the past. They’re up to something, and I want to know what. You got any real idea what they’re working on here?”

  “Well, actually, I didn’t know much until a couple of days ago.” Mike stroked his chin thoughtfully. “The day before yesterday, there was a boom and the whole building rocked like an earthquake happened, then everyone was really excited. I really only work with data, inputs and outputs and manipulating it to do what they want. It wasn’t ever necessary for me to understand the whole picture. Some of the project leads here were so excited by what happened, though, they started babbling about it. They’ve been trying to create a wormhole.”

  From the way Mike looked at him, Bobby got the impression this was a big deal, or at least interesting. His idea of wormholes involved worms making them in the dirt. This probably related to the stuff Hanamidi told them about. He didn’t understand any of it then, either. “And that means…?”

  “Okay.” Taking Bobby’s response in stride, Mike held up his book with one hand and fished his keys out of his pocket with the other. “Imagine the book is Earth and the keys are some other planet in the universe someplace.” Mike took his keys to the counter and left them there, then returned with the book. “They’re really far apart from each other. The distance is outside a human being’s ability to actually comprehend. If you were to try to drive the distance in a car, it would take thousands of years.”

  “That’s a long damned time.”

  “Yeah. Now, suppose you could somehow create a conduit between the book and the keys so that when something is put into it, it comes out the other end in just a few minutes. That would be pretty incredible, wouldn’t it?”

  “We’re still talking about that thousands of years thing with the Earth and the other planet, right?”

  Mike grinned. “Yeah. Essentially, on this scale, if I put my sandwich in the conduit, it would appear at the keys instantly.”

  “Okay, I got it. So, that’s what they’re trying to do. What happened day before yesterday? ”

  Mike retrieved his keys and sat back down. “They had a breakthrough. Apparently, there was some kind of event a long time ago where this wormhole opened and dropped some stuff on our side. Nobody knows if it was a freak natural occurrence or someone on the other end caused it somehow, or what, but they’ve been trying to reproduce it ever since. Really smart men have worked on it, like Einstein. No dice. They came up with all kinds of ideas, but nothing ever came close to working.

  “Two days ago, they tried something and it was a partial success. They created a conduit through space.” He paused. Bobby figured it was obvious he couldn’t understand a technical explanation, so Mike needed to think about how to explain it in plain English. “Okay. Right. So, they made the tunnel. They dropped in a penny just to see what would happen, and it disappeared. A second later, the tunnel collapsed.”

  “That sounds kinda like a failure.”

  “If all you care about is the tunnel working,” Mike shrugged, “then yeah, it is. They’ve never managed to get a stable tunnel for even a nanosecond before, though, and now they have tons of data to work with, so it’s only a matter of time. Heh, so to speak.”

  Bobby sat there, not sure how knowing this helped him. It was interesting, and sounded exciting. He doubted it would help him with his current problems. This tunnel thing would have Elena, or anyone else he cared about, at the other end. “Alright. That’s…real helpful.” What was he going to do? Say it was useless information?

  Mike brightened. “Good. Is there anything more concrete I can do to help Sam?”

  Standing up, Bobby scratched the back of his head. “I don’t rightly know. She’s in a sort of a jail thing in DeeCee right now. I don’t suppose you can get me into Area 51 so I can do a thing I gotta do there? ”

  “Seriously?”

  Bobby chuckled at the comical amount of shock on Mike’s face. “Yeah, I’m serious, but I think I can handle getting in on my own. Tell you what, though. Let me give you a phone number for a guy, name of Liam. He’s trying to help me out, too. If’n a body can figure out how you can help, it’ll be him. He’s a pretty smart guy. I wouldn’t call him from here, though.”

  Mike offered him a pen and Bobby scribbled the number down on a piece of paper. “I’ll call him when I can. Is he like you?”

  “Ayup, he’s one of us.” He offered his hand and Mike shook it. “You be careful. Folks been killed over this stuff.”

  “Really?” Mike gulped. “I’ll, uh, not hop in my car and start driving, then.”

  “That’s a good plan.” Bobby couldn’t think of anything else to say or do here, so he gave Mike an encouraging smile and broke apart into the swarm. As the dragons went for the ventilation system, he heard Mike gasp in wonder, a reaction he didn’t mind at all. If he intended to be public like he kept saying he did, he’d need to get used to all sorts of reactions. But not now, not yet. It was too early. He still needed the element of surprise, and had no idea what Privek would do if he caught a video of dragons on TV. The agent had the others at his mercy right now, and he didn’t dare take that kind of risk with their lives.

  Outside, he reflected that coming here had almost been a waste of time. Closing the book on White Sands left him feeling accomplished, at least. It must have been a setup before, a way for Privek to get one of his people in with them so he could find their home. A home he could slip up to right now. The side trip would only take him about five hours. He’d likely hit Groom Lake in the middle of the day tomorrow, or he could wait until tomorrow night to hit the other base.

  Except he did promise he’d be as fast as he could manage. Liam was counting on him to find her and free her. Though she didn’t seem to be in much actual danger from Privek, the longer she stayed under his thumb, the longer everyone else did, too. Sebastian, Lily, Stephen, Jasmine, Hannah, Lily… All of them. He had thirty-four brothers and sisters and one nephew, and they all needed to be set free, even Liam and Paul. How fast or slow he sprang Elena dictated how fast or slow he sprang the rest.

  He paused in Albuquerque long enough to graze on restaurant dumpsters and let the dragons strip a junkyard of what they wanted, then headed for Groom Lake. The scenery along the way, mostly empty desert, reminded him of fleeing Afghanistan and Turkey. He didn’t want to think about any of that. The dragons didn’t want him to think about any of that, either.

  Chapter 4

  The facility looked about how Liam expected it to look. His father’s company did government contracting, it built things and had research divisions, and most of it looked a lot like this. The only notable difference was the soldier at the guard post taking Riker’s ID and looking it over. Sitting beside him, Paul took deep breaths while concentrating, trying to manipulate the outcome of this brief encounter. For whatever reason, making a bunch of people ignore Bobby earlier had been easier than getting this one man to let them through.

  “This isn’t a scheduled visit,” Riker told the guard. “Surprise inspection with civilian contractors.”

  Liam, busy dwelling on Kaitlin’s words from two hours ago, perked up and realized he needed to play a part “Is there a problem?” He asked with an air of annoyance. He could do bored impatience, no problem.

  “They usually put the names of anyone coming on my list, Sergeant.” The guard’s expression held a peculiar vagueness, and he kept twitching head. “This is a secure facility.”

  If only they had a clipboard. Liam pulled his ph
one out, hoping it would be good enough for the purpose, and pretended to take notes. In reality, he scrolled through his contacts to see if anyone could be useful here. Laurie owed him for fixing things up with her professor last fall, and her father happened to be an Admiral. He tried to imagine how to word what he needed, and couldn’t come up with a way that didn’t sound awful or go far beyond her debt to him. Also, he’d have to explain it out loud. The guard would catch on.

  “Well, the security is clearly good, but it’s not supposed to keep out people who should be here, only those who shouldn’t be.”

  “He’s resisting me,” Paul muttered out of the side of his mouth.

  “I’ll just call it in,” the guard said. “What name should I give?”

  Liam seized the moment and ran with it. He gave the guard a sharp glare. “How about if I make a call instead, Private—” His eyes flicked to the name patch on the guard’s uniform as he held up his phone. “—Hillson? Would you like to talk to General Hanstadt yourself, maybe make this go quicker?” He flicked his finger to scroll through his contacts list. The key was confidence, and Liam projected plenty of it.

  Hillson swallowed and looked to Riker. Whatever expression the Sergeant gave him along with a curt nod, it convinced the guard. “Um, no, that’s not necessary, sir. Sorry, Sergeant.”

  “It’s okay, Hillson. Just doing your job.”

  “And doing it well,” Liam added as he pretended to tap a note out on his phone. “Carry on.”

  The arm barring the way went up and Riker drove through. “Nice name drop,” he told Liam as soon as the window rolled up.

  Paul sighed. “His mind was too strong and alert, sorry.”

  “It worked out, nothing to apologize for.” Liam noticed his hand shaking and gripped his leg to make it stop. He’d talked a lot of people into and out of things, but never anything with these kinds of stakes before. He took a deep breaths to calm himself.

  When the car stopped, he was as ready as possible for the rest of this. “I think our best bet is if Riker and his men use their uniforms to get us through, and when that’s not enough, I do the talking. You two back me up as needed. Okay?” He didn’t really want to order them around. Kaitlin especially struck him as the type to dislike authority. Someone, though, had to step up, and this was his show. They came for him.