by Kay Cordell
Mr. Mytholic’s gloved grip is tight on the steering wheel. He’s in full villain wear, the green leather stretched to point of tension over his pot belly. Somehow, he’s worked out how to wear his glasses under his mask, the material bulges over the frame.
Something about Mr. Mytholic always makes Erin think he was a high school math teacher before he turned to a life of crime.
“You can’t do this to me,” he says. “I haven’t done a thing. I only wish to retrieve what’s mine!”
“So you didn’t just break into a photography store 10 minutes ago?”
“I took nothing. And what’s it to you anyway? Why can’t you heroes just mind your own business for once?”
“There’s also the matter of you terrorizing the New Am U campus,” TechStorm says.
“I’ve done no such thing!”
The woman in the passenger seat growls in irritation. She’s in all black leather with bits of red along the hems, and doesn’t appear to be all that much older than Erin.
“Enough chit chat,” she says. “Are we going to fight or what? And for the record I’m not his friend. You can call me The Hot Chick.”
Erin smirks at the woman over Mr. Mytholic. “Seriously? I know it feels like all the good names are taken when you’re new to this whole scene, but is that seriously the best you could come up with?”
A flame erupts over the woman’s hand and suddenly it becomes very clear why she calls herself The Hot Chick.
But it’s still a stupid name.
Erin ducks as a fireball explodes through the window. It scorches the air over her head. Her grip on the car slips, but she catches it inches away from crashing to the street.
She doesn’t want to kill these people just because they’re villains. Mr. Mytholic is a troublemaker, but not a real menace like Baron Blackheart or Dr. Heinous or, well, Menace.
This woman, however, is another story.
As Erin sets the Ford down, The Hot Chick leaps from the car and onto the hood. Her arms encased in brilliant flames, her hands stretched upwards. A column of dancing orange heat shoots toward the sky. It splits into several branches and arcs back toward the ground, creating a dome of fire that pushes TechStorm back and descends on Erin quicker than she can react.
Jos throws herself between Erin and the flames. The fire licks at Jos’ clothes and wig, but Jos is unmoving, arms raised to protect her face. Her eyes and mouth aren’t quite as invulnerable as the rest of her.
She angles her face to check on Erin, who has already flown clear, before stepping out of the wall of fire. After patting herself down to put out the little fires that cling to her clothes, she pulls her gloves and sweatshirt off as she backs away and tosses the burned clothing to the street. She takes her singed and still smoking blue wig off and frowns at it.
‘This was my favorite wig,” she says, then tosses it aside as well.
“See,” Erin says, “this is why we can’t have anything nice.”
The dome isn’t solid. Thick arms of flame extend from a meeting point at the top and reach toward the ground, like bars of a bird cage. The whole thing is fed by a constant stream of fire.
From above it all, Erin catches sight of a crowd gathering on the other side of the dome, ladies in tight, short dresses and strappy heels, guys in colorful button-downs and frosted tips. One guy braves the heat to come close, posing with his back to the flames while a friend snaps photos with a disposable camera. A group of Bots glide in, barking at the citizens to stand clear.
Inside the dome, Mr. Mytholic climbs from the car, wiping his brow. Regretting that head-to-toe green leather now, isn’t he?
“What’s with your new partner. Mr. M?” Erin shouts. “You’re not usually a ‘burn it all down’ type of guy.”
“Desperate times, my dear Phenom. Desperate times. But I don’t wish to hurt anyone if I don’t have to. Step aside and we can both go on our merry way.”
“Speak for yourself!”
The bars of flame sprout fiery tentacles. They lash wildly, snapping through the air like whips. On the other side of the dome the Bots converge, flaps extending from their sides as they join together to form a protective barrier covering the crowd of onlookers.
Erin dips and dives, avoiding the deadly whips by a hair. She feels for the molecules in the fire. But they move too frantically, transforming too quickly for her to grab a hold of them.
She really needs to put more practice into grabbing things that aren’t conveniently holding still.
For now, she rips a huge black and yellow sign pointing to a parking garage from the side of a building and uses it as cover.
“We’re wasting time here,” Mr. Mytholic shouts. “This is not what I’m paying you for, Hot Chick!”
“Give me a boost!” Jos shouts. Without waiting for a response, she charges toward the dome.
Reaching out with her mind, Erin gives her little sister a push, increasing Jos’ speed as she breaks through the bars of flame and barrels toward The Hot Chick.
The fiery whips vanish as The Hot Chick diverts her attention, and half of her power at Jos. She lowers an arm and takes aim. A column of fire blasts Jos out of Erin’s grip, sending her crashing out of the dome and through the storefront window of a discount furniture store.
TechStorm swoops in from the other side, the Bots swarming The Hot Chick like angry bees. One arm maintaining the feed to the dome, she throws a frantic fireball with her free hand.
With her telekinesis, Erin latches onto The Hot Chick’s foot and yanks, sending her tumbling off the roof of the car. The flames of the dome falter, and then die. The flames covering The Hot Chick’s arms extinguish.
Erin pins The Hot Chick’s entire body to the ground.
“Now, Tech!”
A pair of Bots move in. A suppressor band—a useful, power blocking device the League is generous enough to supply Erin with and which Erin in turn shares with TechStorm—pops out from the inner compartment of one.
The Bots are seconds away from slapping the band around The Hot Chick when her entire body erupts into flames. Erin looses her mental grip.
“Erin!” Jos is crouched over a fire hydrant near the corner.
Gripping it with both hands, she rips the cap off the hydrant as easily as if she’d been opening a jar of pickles. Water geysers over the sidewalk.
But Erin can work with water. It’s slippery, but not frantic like fire. She takes hold of the gushing stream and directs it at the human pillar of fire.
The Hot Chick screams when the water douses her flames. She thrusts her arms toward Erin as if trying to call on her fire, but nothing happens and the Bots slap the suppressor band on her wrist.
Moments later, she and Mr. Mytholic are side by side on the curb in matching handcuffs. Police sirens wail in the distance, growing closer. The drunkest members of the club crowd had flocked to the fire hydrant, laughing like kids as they danced in the outpour of water and then aaw, man-ing when Jos squeezed the gapping hole on the metal closed.
Most of the onlookers are gone now, the exciting part over.
Jos leans against a metal post. The warm streetlight glints off her exoskeleton. She no longer has her wig or sweatshirt to hide behind and sleeves of her shirt had for the most part burned away. It’s the most her inhuman skin has been exposed. And probably the first time anyone outside her family or the scientists at Ditko Labs has seen her smooth, hairless head.
For once, Jos doesn’t completely wilt into herself. And earlier, she’d almost given a grin when someone yelled that she was “awesome out there.”
And then some gross, old dude asked her out and Erin had to go into big sister mode on him.
But Erin didn’t miss the fact that, even leaning against the post, Jos stood just the littlest bit taller.
“Really, Mr. M.” Arms crossed, Erin stares down at him. She holds a cellphone Mr. Mytholic had been clinging to. It’s how The Extractor is supposed to contact him when he gets wherever the shadow of the past
leads him. “What are you doing out here with dangerous villains like this? I thought you were better than that.”
“I just want it back.” He at least has the decency to look abashed, eyes cast down and shoulders slumped. His usual put on, haughty demeanor has all but vanished. He honestly looks like he’s about to cry.
The Hot Chick has fallen into seething silence, except for the occasional sneeze.
“You want what back?” Erin asks.
“My moon disc!”
“That ugly little round thing that gives you your powers? You lost it?”
Mr. Mytholic sniffs, indignant. “It is not ugly! I was hanging out at The Bar Without a Name and me and Grizzle exchanged a few words. Now, I was only joking, but you know Grizzle is too dumb to take a joke.
“So we end up in the alley behind the bar and he thought him and his goons were going to wipe the floor with me, but I knew I could take ‘em. But I was drinking a little and I got a little clumsy and I dropped it. Grizzle’s goons were on me before I could see where it fell. I had to get out of there before they clobbered me.
“I went back for it a few hours later, but it was gone. I thought maybe Grizzle or one of his goons took it, but I had a mutual friend check and no dice. The Extractor was just helping me find it. Some girl picked it up. He’s following her memory shadow to see where she went with it. And his services don’t come cheap, you know.”
“I think we can guess where it ended up,” TechStorm says. He’s been strangely quiet through all of this. Erin hopes it’s just because he’s feeling under the weather. She can’t have him and Carter suddenly acting different on her. Who’s next? Nate?
Erin nods. “That would explain why all the weirdness has been centered around campus. The question is who at New Am U has it.”
“The Extractor is still on the 1 train. He could lead us right to her.”
“The kind of damage he’s capable of, we shouldn’t risk him unleashing his powers on campus. We have to intercept him. But I have one more question before we go.” She turns back to Mr. Mytholic. “But why’d you hire the Hot Chick? The woman is nothing but trouble.”
“She was only supposed be there just in case whoever has my relic puts up a fight. But I was just going to scare them. I swear. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I just had to have my moon disc back. I can’t go back to being a nobody.”
13
When the Extractor’s train rumbles into New Amsterdam University station, Erin and Jos are waiting.
Updating her about the Extractor’s position through the comm, TechStorm had elected to stay behind with Mr. Mytholic and the Hot Chick until the police wrap things up. But it’s not like he can’t split his Bots and be in two places at once. Erin hates the niggling insecurity, that part of her wondering if it’s something she’s done. If he just doesn’t want to be around her.
Whatever. She doesn’t need him to handle this guy.
Sticking to the shadows on the far end of the platform, Erin holds her breath when the train’s doors slide open. She lays a hand on Jos’ cool shoulder, a reminder to keep still and quiet.
They can’t give the Extractor the chance to conjure the memory of some horrifically violent incident better left in the past. This is the subway after all.
A single rider steps off. Tall, dark and broody. The Extractor wears a long trench coat and shaggy hair that falls into his eyes. He watches something Erin can’t see. Presumably the memory shadow of the girl he’s been following since Midtown, but he isn’t projecting the past for others to see.
Releasing a slow breath, Erin opens the hand clutching the suppressor band and guides the silvery strip silently toward him as the train pings and shuts its doors before thundering forward into the dark tunnel.
She keeps it low to the ground and out of sight, cursing it every time it catches the light. Why did the League have to make the thing so shiny?
A skittering sound echoes off the dingy tiles. It might as well be fingernails down a chalkboard. At the same time that the Extractor looks over his shoulder, Erin steals a startled glance at a black rat the size of a cat dragging a crumbled fast-food bag across the tracks.
In the split second she takes her eyes off the Extractor, he spots her. A white and purple bodysuit doesn’t exactly blend into background, even if Jos with her black on black is standing in front of her to offer some cover.
The Extractor, spins to face them, mouth etched into a scowl.
Jos takes off for him like a bullet.
But something begins to manifest from thin air. She trips and falls over the sudden obstacles in her path.
Starting from the bottom up, pieces of the past are drawn in 3D around them. Pumps and saddle shoes, white gogo and black ankle boots, platform heels and sneakers, Nikes and Adidas. Then pin-striped pants and trim trousers, colorful polyester slacks and ripped jeans along side dresses and skirts whose hemlines rise higher and higher and higher.
The patterns become a jumble of outdated and new, a complete mishmash of the last fifty decades crowding in on each other. More and more and more, layered like a double, triple, quadruple exposed photo. All the people who have ever crossed this platform it seems, will be crossing it once again.
Jos tries to shove her way through them, but the crowd becomes too thick too fast.
He’s trying to crush Erin and Jos in a stampede.
Erin chuckles to herself as she easily lifts herself and her sister to the ceiling, well clear of the growing crowd.
“Nice try!” she calls out, scanning the platform for the suppressor band. She can feel it, still firmly in her mental grip, but she’s lost sight of it in the sea of new bodies below. Holding Jos aloft while trying to manipulate the unseen band, small as it is, strains her mentally.
Her head brushes the ceiling. She absently adjusts her height as she quickly pulls the suppressor band into view. The lights overhead flicker.
“Erin!” Jos cries. “The ceilings! The walls!”
The worn tiles and dingy concrete around them are crumbling into rough rock. And it’s closing in on them. He’s reverting the station back into the it’s original state of solid earth, with them in the center of it.
Jos’ eyes are wide with panic, but she squeezes her lips tight with a determination to remain calm. They’re pressed closer to the still growing crowd below, the craggy ceiling scrapes against them.
The Extractor smirks and gives her a two fingered salute from the stairs before racing toward street level.
“Grab the band!” Erin commands, sending it to Jos, who’s closer to it.
Concentrating fully on securely gripping Jos, Erin shoots for the quickly closing gap of the exit. The platform lights give out and everything is plunged into darkness.
They slam into the concrete steps as the station’s entrance closes up behind them. The wind is knocked from Erin. Her left side radiates pain from her crash landing. But Jos pops up immediately and pounces at the Extractor at the top of the stairs.
She tackles him, catching his leg and pulling him back down the stairs. But he knocks the band from her hand before she can slap it on him. It clatters down the steps.
Feeling considerably less spry than her little sister, Erin rolls to her feet and sends the suppresser band rocketing toward him while Jos has his attention.
“Hold him still!” Erin calls.
An explosion of white fabric sends Jos flying across the tiny, enclosed space. She crashes down behind Erin. The giant, airbag-looking thing vanishes from in front of The Extractor as quickly as it had appeared.
Rage fills Erin. She lets go of the suppressor band and throws everything she has at The Extractor. She flattens him against the steps, hard, and holds on to him so tight he can’t move an inch.
Nobody hurts her baby sister and gets away with it.
But Jos, once again, is up in a flash. She sprints up the stairs, snatches up the suppressor band and closes it around The Extractor’s wrist.
Below them, the station re
verts back its shabby, smelly glory. The manifestations of the past are nowhere to be seen.
Erin loosen her grip on The Extractor who howls with rage and indignation as Erin floats him up the stairs to the street. The cops arrive just in time to slap cuffs on him and stuff him into the back of a black and white.
“Let me down!” he barks the whole time. “I won’t be taken in by a damn teeny bopper in a purple cat suit!”
“Watch your language, buddy,” Erin says. “My little sister’s here. She’s impressionable.”
He’s not exactly cooperative when she asks him to describe the girl he’d been tracking.
After watching the patrol car drive off with The Extractor in the back, Erin and Jos make their way across the quiet, glowing campus to Kirby Hall.
“Bet you thought running away from home would be the most exciting thing you did tonight,” Erin says with a grin.
“What about the moon disc?” Jos asks.
“It’ll be easy to figure out who has it. Since whoever it is probably works at that photography store, all we have to do is go back when it opens and talk to the manager. He should be able to tell us who was working that night and we’ll narrow it down from there. You agree it can wait until tomorrow—well, later today, Tech?”
“Yes, that’s fine,” he says through the comm. After a breath he adds, “That got a little crazy. I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Thanks,” she says. But from the way the comm has gone dead silent, Erin knows he’s already disconnected. It’s the last she’ll hear from him for now.
Well, it is wish-I-was-in-my-bed o’clock in the morning. He’s probably just calling it quits, like any sane person should.
She wouldn’t waste anymore brain space on trying to figure out what’s wrong with the guys around her. Not when Jos showed how amazing she is tonight.
Erin links arms with her. “Look at my baby sister. You’re such a badass. You jumped in the path of that fire like it was nothing.”