Wearing the Cape

by Marion G. Harmon

  Nursing my drink, I squirmed.

  My reaction to last night had been the response of a newbie who'd never seen the "mean streets," and honesty made me admit fright certainly colored my reaction. My heart still raced when I remembered how helpless I'd felt as Brick pulled me down.

  But I knew the risks.

  Well... rats. I was going to twist on this. If I asked his opinion Father Nolan would side with me. Probably. But I had a horrible feeling that Dad would side with Atlas. Bottom line, we hadn't killed anybody, we'd arrested the ones that had, and now innocent people slept safer. Did we owe the bad guys anything beyond the law's requirements?

  And did I owe Atlas an apology? I looked around for the girls; maybe I ought to call it a night and sleep on it—just remembering our argument made me feel sick. If he was right, or even half right, I'd have to apologize. I wished I could just drop it, but Mom had taught me better than that.

  Then I noticed the club-goer sitting next to me.

  The table to my left was empty when we sat down, but sometime since it had been occupied. The noise in my head and the occupant's unnatural silence kept me from noticing, but now her presence practically jumped out at me.

  She wore a night-black costume, a spandex catsuit with gloves and thigh-boots to match under a tailored bulletproof vest. Slit up to her waist at the sides, the vest hung down to her thighs in the front and back almost like a skirt. Buckled straps hugged it to her figure and supported two empty shoulder-holsters, and a deep hood cast her face in shadow. She was far more conservatively dressed than most of the room. And she was dead.

  Seriously dead.

  I was still learning to deal with the hugely increased slice of the spectrum I could see. Everything with a temperature above absolute zero radiates on some part of the infrared spectrum, so to me everyone and everything has a visible temperature my brain translates as tinted overlays of the colors I know, dark purple being the coolest and brilliant white being the hottest. I was learning to mostly ignore it, like mall music.

  So in a dimly lit room full of people I sat surrounded by softly glowing human light bulbs, and she wasn't one of them. She was room temperature. And as I focused I realized she wasn't breathing and I couldn't hear the soft percussion of a heartbeat, either. A corpse sat next to me drinking a margarita. Even for The Fortress on a Friday night, that was weird.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Consider the psychology of the superhuman. Breakthroughs are generally triggered by severe physical stress or emotional shocks, but they are also sometimes the result of monomaniacal focus or psychotic drive. To say the least, a great many superhumans start with issues. Is suddenly being granted a large dose of wish-fulfillment supposed to make them better adjusted?

  Dr. Alice Mendel, Superhuman Psychology

  What do you say to a dead person? Pardon me, but why aren't you breathing?

  Or do you ignore it, as you do someone with really bad breath? My extensive social training hadn't prepared me for this, but at the very least introductions were in order. When you have two people sitting alone side by side then politeness demands it; otherwise you're obviously ignoring each other. Very rude.

  That decided me, and I turned to face her.

  "Hello," I said politely. "I'm Astra."

  She picked up her drink and turned towards me.

  "The sidekick. I know." Now that she faced me I saw that under the hood she wore a black half-mask. It started at the cheekbones and turned into a skullcap, actually contoured to suggest a skull, that completely covered the top half of her head. On her pale face (even her thin lips were pale) the effect was spooky.

  "So did you graduate last night?" she asked.

  "I'm sorry? Oh, you mean the South Side fight?

  She nodded, sipping her drink. I shook my head.

  "I'm still a rookie; right now all they trust me with on my own is getting kitties out of trees."

  My honesty surprised a laugh out of her.

  "Serious?"

  "I can't even fly patrol without a partner yet."

  She smiled. A dry smile, but genuine.

  "Artemis." She said.

  "It's nice to meet you. Do you mind if I ask a personal question?"

  "I might. Go ahead."

  I lowered my voice and leaned in a bit.

  "Why are you room-temperature?"

  That sat her back. She set her margarita down.

  Finally she said "Any other observations to make?"

  I plunged ahead.

  "You're also not breathing except to talk, and you've got no heartbeat."

  She didn't say anything.

  "I'm sorry. It was an observation, not criticism. Sorry." I started to get up, but she put a hand on my arm. I sat.

  She looked around and then leaned in closer.

  "There's a stairs to the roof for flyers who don't want to walk in past the line. I'll meet you out there." And she was gone. Not going, gone: in the space of a heartbeat she faded into mist that swirled away, leaving me with a cold damp wisp of breeze.

  A few patrons looked my way and then away again as I stared at her empty chair.

  What had I started?

  * * *

  My breath puffed in the damp night air when I stepped outside. I walked to the edge to look down at Rush Street, wanting to see something besides shadows and the sides of buildings. Clouds sailed above, bright with reflected city light, and I smelled someone's cigarette below. Marlborough Lights. Then she stood beside me, going from mist to solid in the time it took me to turn my head.

  I'd been holding myself ready for it and didn't—quite—jump.

  Much taller than me, she leaned on the wall to compensate and we stood wrapped in silence while she looked down at the club line. I waited; it was her turn.

  "You know that some people break through because of an obsession?" she said conversationally. "Like your friend Chakra, who got there with sacred sex."

  I nodded.

  "A few years ago there was a sociopath named Tommy who wanted to be a vampire."

  Her breath didn't fog the air.

  "He lived the lifestyle, drank blood, had dental work done, the whole bit, but he decided it wasn't enough. There's an old legend about suicides rising as vampires, and he went with that. It should have simply killed him, and if God had any mercy it would have."

  "But it didn't?"

  "Oh no. He got to be one of the lucky ones. The freak's breakthrough gave him exactly what he wanted—immortality and a real thirst for the blood he already fetishized. He got the full list of phobias too: holy water, crosses, consecrated ground, entering uninvited, garlic. But he didn't care because at heart he was a rapist who'd never had the courage to even ask a girl out."

  She turned her back to the street and leaned against the ledge, watching me.

  "I knew him in high school. Or he knew me anyway. Can you picture me a cheerleader? He was just one of the invisible geeks we shared the halls with. He might have said something to me at graduation—I really don't remember. After he changed he tricked his way into our home and ripped my parents' throats out, kidnapped me and kept me in his cellar for two weeks before turning me. I died in a dark hole, and then I woke up and killed him."

  Now she grinned, showing fangs.

  "I staked him with a broken ax handle first chance I got. Then I cut his head off, burned the rest of his putrid corpse, and scattered the ashes on Lake Michigan."

  She turned back and looked down at the club line again. Her voice dropped.

  "He even killed the dog. What kind of sicko does that?"

  "I—" I flinched away from the image her bare words conjured up, pretty sure I was about to re-experience the tapas. "I don't remember hearing any of this."

  "You think the police like to advertise unsolved murders and disappearances? So far as they know I'm still missing and presumed dead, and I keep it that way because, like you said, I don't breathe. Anne Rice has a lot to answer for."

  "That's horrible,"
I said. "How do you live?"

  "Being a freelance hero pays decently. No medical, though."

  She looked me over, and sighed.

  "I can make you forget the last fifteen minutes or so," she offered. "I'll go home and we'll call it a night. You know—'look into my eyes.'" She gave it a corny Dracula lisp, and waited for my answer.

  She was the second person to tell me she could steal my memories.

  "Then why did you tell me?"

  She gave the happy crowd below a last look.

  "No reason, but we were both made by evil men."

  I considered it and shrugged, forcing a smile.

  "We left our drinks downstairs."

  I called Mom and Dad when I got back to the Dome.

  PART THREE

  Chapter Seventeen

  Burnout's jury trial commences today. Burnout, aka Roger Carr, is facing multiple counts of statutory rape, drug possession, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and, if sentenced, could receive from ten to twenty years in prison. Many critics of the prosecution are calling the trial a political stunt on the part of DA Allen Montanolla.

  Chicago News at Five

  * * *

  I fumbled my apology Monday morning, something not at all like me. It started badly when I knocked on the open door of Atlas' surprisingly bare office.

  "I'm sorry," I said.

  He looked up from his e-pad.

  "What?"

  Now I hesitated. Should I repeat myself, or wait for his permission to come in? Covering my social stumble with a tug to straighten the line of my vest, I stepped inside.

  "Do you have a moment?" I asked more correctly.

  "Absolutely," he said, dropping the pad beside his mask and pointing to a chair. "Sit down. Please." He seemed glad to see me, and I took it as a good sign.

  Closing the door carefully, I sat. And promptly froze up again.

  He gave me a moment, and when I obviously didn't know where to start, started for me.

  "You want to talk about Thursday night?" he asked.

  Getting a grip, I took a deep breath. "Yes. I reacted badly, and I wanted to apologize. I shouldn't have questioned your judgment. I just—I'm sorry."

  I realized that I was on the edge of my seat, practically sitting on my hands. I folded them in my lap. Where had all my social training gone? Mom would be embarrassed for me.

  "I was wrong," Atlas said.

  Wait, what?

  "I took unnecessary risks. You were right about that. When we went in we should have gone in hard, left no room for more shenanigans. I still wouldn't have stopped it from starting, but when they'd already been caught misbehaving we didn't have to let them add to it. When you put on the cape you do the job, but I made it more dangerous than it should have been, and people who shouldn't have got hurt. I'm sorry."

  "I'm fine, really—" I protested automatically.

  "No you're not, and I was wrong there too. You're a hard one, I can tell. Not on other people: on yourself. You weren't ready Thursday, not in your head. I expected you to walk in this morning and tell me you were done, that you'd reconsidered. But you haven't, have you?"

  I opened my mouth, and closed it again. No, I hadn't. Why not?

  "So I'll accept your apology if you'll accept mine." He smiled, and something indecipherable crept into his eyes. "And can I say I was impressed? I don't care how rough field hockey gets, you've never been in a real fight before and you handled Brick and Cryo alone."

  "I— Thank you." I found myself blushing like a schoolgirl. He smiled again, shaking his head.

  "No need, I call it like I see it."

  I bit back a second lame thank you, had no idea what to say, and was pathetically grateful when he looked at his clock.

  "Isn't Ajax waiting for you?"

  "Oh! Yes, I— Thank you." Argh. I stammered something at least halfway coherent before getting out of there, blushing hotter than I've ever blushed before.

  What is going on?

  * * *

  Quin only added to the weirdness of the day. She cleared my morning schedule and I found her waiting for me when I left my training session. Her eyes twinkled behind her black domino mask.

  "Have you got a few minutes before you go study?"

  "A few," I said. "What's up?"

  "Come on up to my office." She grinned, all mysterious. "I'll show you."

  She had an upstairs office, so we took the elevator up to the atrium. I said hi to Tom in passing. I kept trying to get to know the security and support people, but Tom, Bob, and even Willis spoke only when spoken to and then stayed strictly on point. Willis, the most talkative of the crew, was laconic in the extreme. Weird.

  The ground floor, with its theater, museum and gift shop, is mostly open to the public during the day and we made our way through a crowd of morning visitors that included at least one third or fourth-grade fieldtrip troop—a large, happy swarm, all wearing Junior Sentinel t-shirts, bouncing and waving as the guides tried to get them organized for a trip through the museum. We laughed and waved back without stopping; I'd learned if we did stop all traffic through the atrium practically froze around us. Too bad, really, even if they were a little too old for Got-Your-Nose or What's-Your-Name.

  Quin's office flanked Al's just off the City Room, a high-tech version of any police precinct dispatch room with lots of smart-screens and open stations. It's home to Dispatch, the team that moves us and the other CAI teams around like chess pieces. Other workstations share the space with the ten dispatch stations, filling the space with chatter and energy.

  We came in through a railed off and glass-walled observation deck, there so visitors and tours could move through easily without disturbing the dispatchers. A short set of stairs took us to a higher balcony along the left wall. Alex and Quin's offices were glass-walled on the City Room side so both of them could watch the action without stepping out on the balcony.

  Closing Quin's door shut out the noise, and from her desk we couldn't be seen from the City Room floor. Posters of Vegas shows covered the other three walls. She followed my glance but didn't comment on them.

  "Sit," she said, pointing to the chair beside her desk. Sitting behind it she turned her huge computer flatscreen so we could both see it, and handed me the mouse.

  "I thought you might want to see this."

  The screen displayed Powerbeat's website, opened to a page dedicated to young and hip heroes. Today the page was all about me.

  No way.

  An article about last Thursday's fight sat front and center, and it breathlessly credited me with taking down two A-class villains in my first battle. I followed the links. Lots of them took me to pictures and video of me and Atlas flying patrol, one linked to a whole page of cell-phone pics of me and the other girls outside The Fortress, and others led to blogs and posts analyzing and dissecting me, my power-set, my costume, my sidekick status, and speculating about my background. A flame-war raged between one camp hailing me as the new post-feminist icon and another camp denouncing me as a sellout.

  "Chatter scores rate you the most talked-about hero this morning," Quin said as I scanned the links. "You're way ahead of Burnout's drug and sex scandal. The tabloids are already crying 'child endangerment' despite your costume enhancements, and bets are being taken on whether you'll become a full-time cape when you finish your training and if it will be with the Sentinels."

  "But why?"

  "First, because you're with the Sentinels. With four movies, a TV series, a graphic novel line, and the fact that our first real-world superhero and the President of the United States are both founding members, I don't know, for some reason we're still The Team as far as the public's concerned. We're an unstoppable franchise.

  "Second, you're the sidekick of America's premier hero, who happens to be the real-world answer to Superman. If he's not the world's Biggest Boy Scout at least he's the world's Last Cowboy.

  "Third, and I missed this angle at first, you're the only current Sen
tinel with a true secret identity."

  "What does that have to do with anything?"

  She put her elbows on her desk and folded her hands under her chin, looking way too happy.