Dreams of the Golden Age

by Carrie Vaughn

  Celia had forgotten that they’d both been in her room when everyone came to visit at once. Not that she’d been thinking too straight then, drugged up and suffering from a concussion.

  “How can I forget the cute detective you ditched for the freaky telepath? I remember,” Analise said.

  They both blushed at that one, how could they not? Didn’t help that Mark was still awfully cute. But with his serious calm and salt-and-pepper hair he also resembled his father, onetime mayor and Commerce City’s last serious supervillain. Kind of weird.

  “Um. Yeah. Mark, Lady Snow and Stormbringer are her kids. I thought she should be in on the conversation about what to do about them.”

  Analise’s gaze burned fierce. “You are not going to arrest them—”

  “No, not at all,” Mark said. “This is entirely off the record. This … this all has to be off the record.” He looked to Celia to explain. She gathered herself and did so, carefully.

  “There’s a genetic component to superhuman powers. It has to do with an accident that happened at a laboratory run by Simon Sito, the Destructor, that was funded by my grandfather and where your father worked. They were both there during the accident, along with a dozen workers. The powers originate there, and they’re passed down from parent to child. Not always.” She and Mark exchanged a glance there, because they’d never been entirely sure how much of their makeup came from that accident—they didn’t have powers, but they both had a love for and loyalty to the city that was almost superhuman. Was that part of the Leyden Labs inheritance, or a coincidence? “But sometimes, yes. I found this out by accident, but I’ve been tracking the lineages ever since. With our kids hitting puberty, along with about a dozen others, I wanted to get the potential inheritors into one place, so they’d be safer. So we could watch them.”

  Analise glared at Celia. Wondering how much she’d told Mark, no doubt—or if Mark had guessed. It wasn’t hard, once you put all the pieces down on the same surface.

  Mark made a peace offering. “Since we’re sharing secrets, I’ll tell you mine: Simon Sito, the Destructor, was my grandfather. I didn’t inherit anything, but I could have. That’s why I’m working with Celia, to try to prevent another Destructor from happening to the city.”

  Celia expected shock, even horror from Analise, processing that information. But it was old history now. Abstract, irrelevant. Then, her friend’s brow furrowed as she decided if her own history was old enough to reveal.

  But Analise shook her head. “As much as I’d like to go public some days, there’s still a warrant out, and no statute of limitations. I can’t say anything.” It was as much an offering as Analise could give, and it was enough.

  “I understand,” Mark said.

  Somehow, moving on after that became easier. They all knew where they stood now, even if the words hadn’t been spoken.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Celia continued. “We know we’re not going to stop them from trying to be heroes. The powers come with the need to use them. Our choices are to lock them in their rooms until they’re eighty, and have them bust out anyway and do something crazy. Or we give them an outlet, and we supervise them.” Like keeping the secret elevator open. At least they would know where their kids were.

  She looked at Mark. “I can give you my files—but only you. None of this gets recorded. And you have to keep the police off their backs. Watch them, supervise them, keep them out of serious trouble—hell, give them missions if you want. But keep it secret. Give them the freedom to figure this out on their own. It’s not like they’d actually listen to us. Analise, you know what they’re going through. Let them go back to Elmwood and be with their friends. They can help each other.”

  Analise sat on the park bench, a little apart. She closed her eyes, put her face in her hands—thinking. And if she said no, absolutely not, and kept the kids out of Elmwood and told Celia and Mark to stay the hell away, would Celia stay away? No, she realized, she probably wouldn’t.

  “Single parenthood’s been hard enough,” she said finally. “And now you slam this on me?”

  “This is supposed to help them, Analise. To help you. It’ll be better, with more of us looking out for them.”

  “You’re not doing this to try to manipulate them into creating a second Olympiad.”

  “That’s an unintended side effect. Honest.” She wasn’t sure Analise or Mark believed that one, the way they were looking at her.

  Analise said, “I just want to keep my kids safe. Whatever it takes.”

  “Me, too,” Celia said. “And I have some ideas about how to do that.”

  * * *

  For a stretch of time in her teens and early twenties, Celia had been the object of about a dozen kidnappings. Her parents’ secret identities had been revealed, the Olympiad’s cover blown, and she became the ultimate target for villains and supervillains who thought they could attack the heroes by holding her hostage. The scheme never worked, and the Olympiad rescued her every time. She’d never been seriously hurt, and only a little traumatized. Okay, maybe a lot traumatized.

  Now, sitting in a nondescript, inoffensive doctor’s office waiting to hear the results of a barrage of tests felt a little like being kidnapped. Time had slowed, her future had become fuzzy. But she couldn’t see her captors, and she had no bindings to struggle against. To ground her. She felt like she was floating, and her heart raced. She had been kidnapped in a sense, hadn’t she? It was enough to make her nostalgic.

  But this time, she couldn’t look her captor in the eye, there’d be no pompous monologue about his nefarious plans. And the Olympiad wasn’t on the way to save her.

  She took Arthur’s hand, held it a little more tightly than she meant to.

  The checkup three days ago hadn’t gone the way Celia expected. She expected the doctor to tell her she had a cold or some other virus. Mono, maybe. That she needed to rest, take a vacation like Arthur said. She’d have her temperature and blood pressure taken, her heart would race a little, the doctor would tsk at her and send her home with anti-anxiety medication.

  No, be honest: That was what Celia had hoped would happen. She had hoped very hard for something simple and nondisruptive. Something she could laugh about in a week, while teasing Arthur for being overprotective.

  But then the clinic had called. “We have your results. We’d like you to come in to discuss them,” they’d said, which meant bad news. Not just bad, but the worst. They wanted to see you only when it was bad. She hadn’t been able to focus, so Arthur had had to call the town car and guide her down the elevator and to the garage.

  Arthur didn’t say a word the whole time. Just kept hold of her and grimly took charge of the situation until they were sitting in the clinic waiting room. Waiting. Anyone else would have muttered vague, untrue reassurances the whole time, but not him. He knew exactly what she was thinking and that there was nothing he could say to comfort her. He was there, and that was enough.

  If he was angry, upset, or scared, he couldn’t show it. He controlled his emotions because they’d impact the people around him, and she’d long since gotten used to him reacting like a stone to the most chaotic situations. But just this once, she wanted to know what he was feeling. The tension in his face had become constant.

  A receptionist called them in and locked them away in the quiet of a doctor’s office. Not an exam room but an unassuming office with a plain desk and uncomfortable padded chairs. Diplomas on the wall, family pictures on the bookshelves.

  When the door opened, Celia flinched, and Arthur squeezed her hand.

  Dr. Valdez approached, full of pleasantries, shaking their hands before setting down a manila folder, then sitting behind her desk like it was a shield. Celia didn’t hear a word of it, and when Valdez stopped moving and she finally got a good look at her, the doctor’s smile seemed stricken.

  “As you might have gathered from my call, the results of the blood work weren’t normal. In fact, it’s rather more serious than was initiall
y expected, which is why you were asked to come in.”

  That switch to business passive voice grated on Celia’s nerves. The woman really didn’t want to talk about this, and Celia was trying to figure out how to interrupt the awkward introduction to get to the actual diagnosis when Arthur did it for her.

  “Leukemia,” he said. “It’s leukemia.”

  Having a word made it somehow less nerve-racking. Celia could breathe again. She couldn’t think, but she could breathe.

  The doctor appeared to deflate, unable even to fake a smile. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  Celia kept repeating the word to herself. It was bad, okay. But how bad? And how had it happened in the first place? It wasn’t like catching a cold, was it?

  “Do you know what could have caused it?” Arthur said, voicing her question before she could formulate it herself.

  “We’re not really sure. A variety of causes have been shown to have an impact in some cases. Particularly if you’ve ever been exposed to powerful radiation—”

  A wave of vertigo shook her and she clung to the arm of the chair. A flashback, a visceral smell of a secret laboratory in the process of burning, and her father coming to save her … The Psychostasis Device exploded, and he’d hunched over her, shielding her from a massive burst of radiation. “You’re safe,” he’d whispered, his dying words.

  The feeling was so strong she wanted to run. Instead, she put her hand over her mouth to stifle laughter. Oh, God.

  The radiation from the psychostasis ray that her father had died to protect her from. He’d died thinking he’d saved her, that she was safe, but she wasn’t, the radiation had just taken twenty years to kill her.

  She swallowed back the scream that came next. Calmed herself.

  “Celia,” Arthur whispered. His expression was taut, scared. His fear pressed out, against her mind. She squeezed his hand back. She was okay. She was going to be okay. She decided, right there, that she had to be.

  —The girls, how am I going to tell the girls about this?—

  —Wait.— Arthur urged calm without speaking.

  She took a breath and settled. Looked straight across the desk to the doctor. “What do I do?”

  * * *

  The treatment plans were extensive and arduous. Her case would go through a panel review in the next few days, and the panel would likely recommend chemotherapy, which ought to be started as soon as possible. The doctor encouraged her to do as much research as she could in the meantime.

  Oh, would she. She would kill that research. She’d started her career in forensic accounting; nothing would escape her hunt for information.

  “How am I going to tell my mother?” she said abruptly as the car pulled onto the ramp that sloped down to West Plaza’s parking garage. “I don’t know how to tell my mother.” She didn’t want to tell anyone. She wanted to pretend this wasn’t happening, but she wasn’t that good an actress. “I don’t want to tell the girls. Not yet, not till I know what I’m doing next.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  “Is that the telepath or the psychiatrist talking?”

  “It’s the man you’ve been living with for twenty years and the father of your children talking,” he said. “We’re already keeping so many secrets.” He actually sounded sad. Tired, maybe.

  She leaned against him, snuggled under the crook of his arm, and let the warmth of his mind as well as his body envelop her. He could whisper hush directly into her panicking hindbrain. She’d never tried to keep secrets from him.

  “We’ll wait until this city development deal is finalized. It should just be a couple of weeks, then I’ll tell. I’ve got sharks circling for me, and I don’t want them finding out about this. I can install equipment for treatment in West Plaza. No one will ever see me at the hospital, and I’ll tell people when I want them to know. I can do this.”

  “We, Celia. We can do this. It’s going to involve all of us sooner or later.”

  One day at a time. She had her plans, they were all in order, it would all work out. She just had to keep telling herself that.

  Arthur held her hand in a gesture that seemed desperate.

  * * *

  Her mother was gone from the penthouse when they returned, so that was one decision Celia could put off until later. Suzanne had left a note about shopping at the Asian market on the north side for dinner ideas, and reminded her that she’d invited Robbie over for dinner and she hoped they could all be there because it had been quite awhile since they’d all gotten together, what with the girls being so busy with school, and so on.

  It was like she was still in high school herself. Only back then, the notes Suzanne left were just as likely to be about some mysterious unnamed “errand,” which always meant that the Olympiad was off thwarting plots, and if she got hungry there was lasagna that she could put in the oven.

  Celia stared at the note a long time until her eyes brimmed with tears, which she scrubbed away a moment later. She didn’t have time for that.

  Sitting at her desk in her office seemed remarkably futile. She had the work she’d abandoned, the day’s task list, and the mental acuity needed to perform a simple task like open her e-mail folder seemed monstrously difficult. Arthur took one of the chairs and sat, legs stretched out.

  “Are you going to be all right?”

  She wondered sometimes why he bothered asking.

  She didn’t have to say anything, but the silence was harsh, so she did. “I thought work would distract me. I don’t want to tell them, Arthur. I just don’t. I can already see the looks on their faces, and with Robbie coming over tonight…” The weight of all their stares, all their pity. Their fear for her. She just couldn’t.

  “You may be right, for now,” he said. “We can at least enjoy tonight.”

  She was surprised he agreed, and she stared at him for any nuance in his expression. He radiated only calm, with no indication of how hard he had to work for that calm.

  “I love you,” she said.

  * * *

  That night, the kids roared home from school like a whirlwind. She didn’t need to check the cameras because it seemed she heard them all the way from the ground floor. They stormed into the penthouse, Bethy going on about two friends at school fighting over something ridiculous, and Anna grumbling at her about how there were more important things to worry about and could she please grow up, then Bethy insisting she was grown up, and Anna declaring she was going to take a nap and could everyone please leave her alone. They used to play together, Celia thought wistfully. They still had tubs of dolls and blocks in their bedrooms that they hadn’t touched in years.

  From her office, Celia heard Suzanne call from the kitchen, “Don’t forget, we’re having company for dinner, so you can’t skip, okay?” Mumbled acknowledgments followed.

  If Celia could just forget that she was sick, she’d be able to get through the next few hours without a problem.

  She wrapped up her research, carefully purged her web browser of all medical links, and locked file folders in the safe. By the time she’d finished, washed up and changed into jeans and a blouse, and returned to the living room to crack open a bottle of wine, building security announced that Robbie Denton had arrived and was on his way up. She was at the front door to meet him when he emerged from the private elevator.

  Once upon a time, Robbie Denton could run faster than the eye could see. As the Bullet, he had joined the Olympiad and battled crime and defeated supervillains. He was legendary.

  Now he walked with a cane, held discreetly at his side to prop up a weak leg. Arthritis in the hips, the degeneration of joints that had worked many times harder than they’d been designed to. When he finally retired a good eight or so years ago, he revealed that he’d been in pain for a long time. He’d been slowing down, hoping no one would notice, until he finally stopped. He’d had hip replacement surgery. There’d been complications—his mutated physiology rejected the implants. Further surgeries kept him on
his feet and out of a wheelchair but hadn’t given him back his speed.

  He was terribly good-natured about it, Celia thought. He smiled and made jokes about the rest of him holding up just fine, and how he was lucky to have survived long enough to have these problems. Which made her think about her father, who’d had so much of his identity wrapped up in his powers that he probably wouldn’t have survived losing them. At least not easily.

  Celia let Robbie fold her into a squeezing one-armed hug while he leaned on his cane.

  “How you doing, kid?”

  She would always be the kid to Robbie, even though she had two kids of her own now. Her smile turned stricken, but she moved on quickly, hoping he didn’t notice the hesitation. “I’m fine. Busy, tired, the usual, but fine.” And she would be, as long as she kept declaring it.

  “Your mom in the kitchen? Is that stir-fry?” Robbie took a long breath through his nose.

  “Yup.” They could hear the sizzling all the way in the foyer, not to mention smell the spices and vegetables. If they went to look in on her, they’d find her, wok in hand, pan spitting hot, stove cold. Still using her powers to do something as simple as cook a meal. She hadn’t burned herself out, so to speak. Powers were so unpredictable, so chaotic. Celia didn’t like to think what would happen if Arthur ever lost his powers—or lost control of them.

  She quickly tucked that thought away because Arthur came in then from the elevator. He’d retreated to his own office to wrap up the week’s paperwork—pretty much at the exact moment Celia decided she’d be okay on her own, with her computer and a project. He’d probably been listening—sensing, scanning, however he did it—and knew that Robbie had arrived. The two men shook hands. Standing next to his former teammate, Arthur looked older. Not old—he was ten years younger than the rest of the Olympiad. But the sheen in his hair had begun to go silver, noticeable next to Robbie’s icy gray.

  They were all so much older.

  The kids came out a moment later, and Robbie gushed over them. He was their Uncle Robbie, and even Anna smiled for him. They trekked to the dining room adjoining the kitchen, and the evening rolled along nicely after that. The kids set the table. Everyone asked Suzanne if she needed help, but the cook shooed them away.