Dropping into building’s service alley, I got to the ground and out onto the safely lit street without trouble. Putting another block of shuttered businesses between me and the widening aerial dragnet, I turned to head down Miracle Mile in the evening pedestrian crowd.
Where I began spotting differences.
The crowd was thinner than it should have been for the warm night. Walking south, I saw way too few cars on the street—most of them models at least five years old. Channeling the Bees’ fashionista radar and looking at the crowd around me, I didn’t see much of this year’s fashion modes, either—even pedestrians obviously dressed up for clubbing and high-end dining mostly wore stuff a couple of years out of date. And there were a lot fewer of those than there should have been, too.
There were a lot of strolling foot-police, though, and— I stopped right there in the street until I remembered to blend as I looked again. Maybe a fifth of the men in the evening crowd seemed to be armed, a lot of them carrying their weapons of choice in belt holsters designed to minimize their profile without really concealing them.
What? Seriously, what?
And…yes, the women too; a couple of happy ladies lurched into me outside Club Nocte and my super-duper sense of smell picked up the unmistakable whiff of gun oil. Their club dresses were too short for thigh holsters, so I guessed they were packing in their little shoulder-slung handbags.
My Chicago didn’t allow much concealed carry, didn’t allow public carry, and this was not home—maybe not even close to it.
More spooked than I’d ever admit to anyone, I clutched my bag tighter and picked up my pace. Two more intersections brought me to Millennium Park, where I could cross to the Atlas Memorial and the Dome. Except it wasn’t the Atlas Memorial; people-watching had distracted me so badly that I didn’t notice the change until I’d crossed the street to the memorial plaza and saw IT. It was—
Oh God. Oh God. God wasn’t here. He couldn’t be, not where this abomination was.
“Miss? Are you alright?” The man beside me touched my elbow, one dip of my sway away from grabbing on to hold me up where I stood on the curb edge of the plaza.
No. No, I’ll never be alright. “Yes, I— Thank you.”
He nodded doubtfully, but accepted it and stepped away as I lowered my hands from my mouth and tried to breathe in a normal and non-worrying way. And not run.
It was the Heroes Memorial, and I couldn’t look away.
There I was, in bronze, kneeling slumped over bronze Atlas. Even before I forced myself to turn, scanning the explanatory plaques in the half-circle of low wall around the plaza and us, I knew what the scene was—what it had to be.
The Whittier Base attack. This was Atlas and I as Seven and the army medics found us after our fight with Seif-al-Din. Except here they hadn’t found us—found me—in time. I’d died, here and now I couldn’t breathe. Mom. Dad. Aaron, Josh, Toby, the Bees, everyone. They’d had to bury me. I couldn’t not see them walking behind my casket as the drums beat and pipes played on a bright cold morning. Not screaming made me dizzy.
The memorial changed all my plans. I couldn’t have taken one step closer, but super-duper vision let me read the plaques behind that obscene monument just fine from where I was, and the center plaque listed the current roster of serving Sentinels: Lei Zi, Watchman, Sifu, The Harlequin, Variforce, Platoon, Psimon, and Iron Jack.
Dad had buried me, here, and he was probably at the Dome right now.
I nearly stepped into traffic backing out of the plaza, and when a cab honked at me I turned and ran.
I didn’t run very far; running drew attention, and my brain started working again before I’d gone half a block. And where was I running to? I crossed at the next intersection and found a drugstore, one of the all-night ones that served the local hotels, and bought some hair-ties and a pair of shades with some of Faith’s cash. They looked a little odd at night, but were the kind that darkened or lightened in response to sunlight or lack of it and they could pass for prescription glasses.
Would I need anything else? Probably not; it wasn’t like anyone was looking for me and I was pretty sure that most of my posthumous news coverage would have stuck to my in-costume shots. Just a pair of glasses and my hair pulled into a messy tail should be enough to fool anyone who didn’t know me. Hair up and shades firmly on, I took advantage of the sanctuary of a bus stop bench while I tried to think.
So now what? Where could I stay? I really had no idea how long I was here for; while the globe’s destinations had been less than random, it showed a distressing tendency to “recharge” at its own speed. Until it was ready—and I had no idea when that would be—all the snow stuck to the bottom of the globe like it was glued there and I couldn’t shake it up and jump again until it drifted free. My…interesting night in Shakespeare’s fairy wood and my adventures with Jolly Man and Davy Jones under the Blue Moon never would have happened if I’d been able to just leave within a few hours after popping in.
I’d been stuck in a pirate movie for days.
What, then? A hotel was out; all the good ones would require ID, and I’d stand out like nobody’s business in the ones that would let me pay for anonymity with cash. Home? Just the thought of what that would mean made me edge on panic again. Call the Bees? Putting them through that would hardly be better. So, where? I waved away two busses and the evening crowd thinned out a lot more before it came to me. Jumping up I hailed the next available taxi I saw.
“Nineteen Lexington Street, please!”
“Yes, ma’am.” My Middle-Eastern driver didn’t blink at my instructions, repeating it to his car to get the best route as he pulled away from the curb. This cab was shiny and new—which was good since my super-senses made taxies a bit chancy sometimes despite their cleaning services.
He wasn’t chatty, a blessing I was very thankful for as we left the Loop behind and the streets got darker and overhung with older trees. Lexington Street sat in the part of Chicago where many of the wealthier families of the Gilded Age had made their homes. A lot of the neighborhood had faded into shabby-genteel, grand old Victorian homes remodeled into apartments or even torn down and replaced, but Lexington Street had survived mostly intact and even been renewed by the interest of the Chicago Historical Society and our 21st Century crop of multi-millionaires.
And Grey House had seen it all.
I got out at the gate, paying the fare with a couple of twenties and not asking for change, and waited until the cab’s lights disappeared around the turn of the road before opening the box to ring the house on the gate phone.
“Hello?” Henry answered on the third ring.
“Good evening, Henry. Is Mrs. Lori at home tonight?” I held my breath.
“And whom would she be at-home for?” Who is that knocking on my door so late?
“It’s Hope, Henry.” Looking up, I took off my shades and made sure that the gate-camera got a good look at me. “Is it too late to ask for some of your famous cocoa?”
“…I see. One moment, Miss Corrigan.”
The line went dead and I counted the seconds until the gate clanked and opened. Walking up the lawn-light illuminated drive, I looked for changes. The Grey House gardens looked as they should, but somebody had trimmed back the trees closest to the property wall. The stone property wall now had an inner security system wired to detect anyone coming over it, making me wonder what I’d find on top of the wall if I looked.
Armed partiers on the street tonight, and now extra home security. Maybe this isn’t a good idea.
Henry met me at the steps to the front doors. He looked the same as always: a butler right out of any British period show, complete with silver hair, stern face, and waistcoat. He’d opened his collar and rolled up his sleeves for the night, but had obviously taken a moment to button up the coat.
“Miss Corrigan. It is a…surprise to see you.”
“I’m surprised to be here too, Henry. Is it too late?”
He smiled. “Never
, for you. Mrs. Lori has not yet retired, and I have informed her that you are here. She is waiting in the library.”
I blinked back tears, and just managed to keep from hugging him. “Thank you, Henry. I’ll go right in.”
He held out a hand for my bag, and I gave it to him. “And I will see about that cocoa.”
Henry had left the library door open and I took a breath before stepping through, bracing myself against the rush of memory. The roomful of shelves with their leather bound books had been the scene of many pre-debutante visits, a few times just me and Mrs. Lori, most of the time with half a dozen daughters of Chicago and their moms. Post-debut I’d learned the rest of the house over the course of many dinners and society parties, but I liked the library best.
“Well.” Mrs. Lori regarded me from her chair by the fireplace. “You look very well, dear. Although hardly dressed to visit.” She was dressed for receiving, in a lace trimmed long-sleeved shirt and a narrow gray skirt with hemline decorously below the knee, gray hair pulled back and gathered in a tight bun to frame her almost unlined face. Did she ever let her hair down? “Come, let me look at you.”
When I obediently advanced across the carpet to stand before her, she regarded me silently before pointing to a close chair angled towards the fire. I sat, back straight and hands folded—I couldn’t sit any other way, not in this house and under the eyes of the Grande Dame of Chicago.
“I will say that this is a surprise, dear,” she said finally. “Not an unpleasant one!” A thin smile—the only kind I’d ever seen her make—softened her face a little. Anyone listening would have thought I’d just unexpectedly dropped by after seeing her at Mom’s last fundraiser, but her voice shook just a little and her eyes were bright in the light of the reading lamps.
I made myself match her manner; the rules required it and I fell back on them naturally. “You don’t seem that surprised.”
“I have failed to be utterly surprised by anything since the day I witnessed a flying man catching a plane, dear. Nothing is impossible anymore, merely improbable or rare. May I ask why you are…here?”
Cutting off a laugh, I had to swallow a couple of times before I could control my own voice. “Why I’m not dead? I’m sorry but I am—I mean, I’m dead here. I’ve come a long way.”
And the story spilled out. The whole story, jumbled and confused, ending in my horror at seeing my own memorial. Henry brought a tray of his cocoa before I’d finished, giving me something to do with my hands, and through it all Mrs. Lori asked almost no questions. When I finished she sat without moving for more than a minute, cup in hand as she looked at me.
“Of course you can’t go home. Good Lord.”
I nodded, vision blurring. “How— How are they?”
“As well as can be expected for parents who have had to bury both of their beloved daughters, which is to say not at all well. But time has passed, and is a healer. It has not broken them, dear, but I am glad you came to me.”
“I have prepared a room, ma’am,” Henry informed her. He hadn’t left us after bringing the tray.
“Thank you, Henry. I believe that you should retire Hope. Grey House is yours for as long as you need, we can talk more in the morning.”
When I nodded again and rose, Mrs. Lori shocked me by rising as well. Before I realized she stepped in and pulled me into a brief, tight embrace. “It will be alright, dear.” It almost broke me down, but I was able to nod and thank her before following Henry.
Henry had turned on the lights, turned down the sheets, and left my bag on the dresser. I knew without looking that he’d have put out towels in the attached bathroom. Putting everything away, I flopped back on the bed and out a long breath.
Sanctuary achieved, for as long as I needed it. Now what? My mind churned, thoughts chasing each other in useless circles. Mrs. Lori was a determined luddite, but her social assistant and Henry both used computers and the internet—I was sure that Henry would let me use his office system tomorrow to research this reality to my heart’s content. Then I could decide what to do next. But the one thing that kept me from changing for bed and crawling between the sheets was Shelly.
I’d become Astra in this reality, so the Teatime Anarchist and his evil twin had existed here too. Obviously. The Big One and Whittier Base Attack had happened, so their time war hadn’t resolved itself before then; that meant I could count on their actions being the same in this reality at least until that awful day. Probably.
But that meant the Anarchist should have “twinned” Shelly, intending a quantum-ghost Shell to be my interface with his Big Book of Contingent Prophecy if he took himself and the Dark Anarchist out of the picture. So why wasn’t she in my head now?
A horrible thought jerked me upright. What if the Teatime Anarchist had lost? The awful possibility stole my breath until I remembered the armed civilians I’d seen tonight. The Dark Anarchist had wanted the US government to go fascist, thinking it the best protection from actual anarchy (I really had named him badly). If he’d won then the government wouldn’t be letting its citizens run around armed, would it? That at least hinted at a Teatime Anarchist win, right?
Okay. I fell back on the bed to stare at the ceiling. Back to Shell. Where was she? She’d been awake before the Whittier Base Attack, a quantum-ghost waiting to reach out and touch me through our neural link.
What do you do when you lose connection? You hang up. I’d died. Our neural link—the one I hadn’t known about then—had been cut from my side. She’d have hung up, maybe re-tasked her end of the link to someone else?
I swallowed thickly around the sudden lump in my throat. The Anarchist had brought her back for me, her Best Friend Forever—and then I’d died before she’d been able to let me know she was even here. It was like a horrible joke, two people calling and missing each other. Souls passing in the night.
Calling each other. I jackknifed upright again, staring at the guest phone on the bedside table.
Could it be that easy?
I tried to imagine Shell. Her back, me gone. Assuming one of the Anarchist’s other endgame traps had taken his twin and probably him out of the picture, then she’d have been left alone. She’d have had to reach out. With her contingent future-knowledge of the Sentinels she’d have probably reached out to them—I desperately wanted to think so—but she’d have kept other lines of communication. Knowing her sense of humor, she’d have arranged one line of communication she’d had before, and even six years after she’d died I remembered her cell number.
Could I just call her? It would be almost as bad as contacting my parents here. So why didn’t it feel that way?
She died first.
As juvenile as it was, I realized I was grinning ear-to-ear. Shell’s first grand reappearance in my Whittier Base hospital room was forever burned into memory. Hi! If I was right, then it was my turn.
I punched the number with a shaking finger, nearly dropping the receiver.
It rang. Pickup, pickup, pickup… Twice. Three times, she was probably tracing the number to see who was calling and—
“Hello? Who is this?”
My vision went spotty and I swallowed until I could open my mouth without breaking into hysterical laughter. “Hi, Shell. It’s me.”
“…Hope? Hope!”
“Yeah. Could you check our neural link? ‘Cause I’ve been calling—”
“Hope!” And there she stood in virtual presence beside the bed, wide-eyed and gripping her hair and looking at me like I was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen and I’d pop like a soap bubble if she took her eyes off me.
I laughed. “One of me, anyway.”
“You can’t be— I can hear you, but—”
“But I can’t be here?” And just like that it wasn’t funny anymore. “I’m a copy like you. Sort of. I just got here sideways.” And I told her. Not everything, and more organized than I’d managed with Mrs. Lori, but enough about the two of us that she understood. She plopped down on the chair besid
e the bed before I finished.
“Wow, that’s— Hope— I’m alive? Living with Mom?”
“Back home yeah. One of you. Both, I suppose—it’s complicated.”
“You think?” She scrubbed her cheeks. “You’d think I’d know all about extrareality crossovers—I do—it’s just—”
“You never thought of this?”
“No—I mean yes, I never ever did!”
“I’m sorry it took me so long to get here.”
“You should be!” She laughed giddily. “But I guess it took me three years to come back so bygones, right? This is just— But—” She sobered fast. “You can’t stay, can you?”
I winced. “You know I can’t. You’re waiting for me back there, too. With everyone else.” I couldn’t stay, but the thought of leaving her here, where I’d died and left her alone, made me physically ache. She could come—she could move herself onto some kind of 22nd Century storage device and I could take her in my bag, give her to Shell to actualize when I got home. Except her mom was here, her fight, her responsibilities. “I—”
“I get it,” she agreed with a seriousness that surprised me. “I’m probably pulling the world apart figuring out how to find you right now. If this Kitsune person hasn’t already told me. He sounds hot.”
And that was the Shell I knew. “He is when he’s a he.”
For whatever reason, she missed my rising flush. “But you’re getting back on your own. Cool. What can I do to help?”
I honestly had no idea; the adrenaline of the missile-race and the shock of the memorial had long worn away, and my brain was finally shutting down. Shell assured me that she’d be there when I called in the morning and she’d keep an eye on me. The only thing she’d say about the current situation was that the team—this team—had caught the Paladins who’d fired at me and were “helping the police with their investigation into the identity of the target.” And that I really didn’t want to talk them. The Sentinels, not the police. Both, actually.
Wearing the Cape 6: Team-Ups and Crossovers Page 16