Ray stepped over and snapped the bar in two in his hands. Show off. I walked past him into the other room and changed back into my regular clothes.
I could hear Ray out in the lab clearly. “I believe that I know where to start. This isn’t technically stolen and it’s raw, pure gold. A pawn shop that thinks he’s ripping us off won’t be too eager to ask questions.”
“All the fences are downtown, near Chinatown. I could go home and get addresses. It would be too clunky on my phone,” was Claire’s contribution.
I clasped The Machine around my wrist and dropped Vera in my belt pouch and walked my bike out past them as Ray dropped the chunk of gold in Claire’s hand. Her eyebrows went up. “How can it be this heavy?” she protested, but she was just being theatrical. She obviously wasn’t straining or anything.
“I’m going home. Don’t touch my toys—you’ll see what they do soon enough,” I called back as the elevator gate shut.
Then I did go home.
I had to take it a lot easier on the way back. My first few building sprees had wrecked me. This one hadn’t been so bad, but I didn’t have the energy to pedal hard. I certainly wasn’t going to speed things up with the teleport rings. That might have been fortunate. When I biked up to home, Dad was standing out front talking to a woman.
Brown hair, decent looks, college age, maybe a little older, and a very in-shape figure. She was giving my dad one very friendly smile, but it would be physically impossible to cheat on my Mom. No, the figure gave it away. She had to be a superheroine.
As I wheeled up, Dad asked her, “So what’s your take? What do we do when middle schoolers start getting into this life?”
Her grin didn’t waver. Maybe it got a little sly. “My ‘take’ is that The Inscrutable Machine is the least important issue we have to worry about right now. Either they’ve got what it takes to be supervillains, or they don’t and they’ll get caught. I’d rather know if cloning technology has finally been perfected.”
We had what it took to be supervillains. I would make sure of that. Criminy, listen to me. I needed to relax. I didn’t get to meet many heroines in person. Let’s see, brown hair, that expression and build…
I parked my bike and walked up to the two of them. “You’re Marvelous, right?”
“I don’t like to brag.” She deserved to be smug. I’d walked right into that.
Dad put his hand on my head. “This is my daughter, Penny.”
Marvelous looked me over and gave a little wiggle of her fingers. “If you’re still wondering who I am… lift!” Except the word wasn’t “lift.” It had an odd rhythm, and a singsongy tone like Chinese. When everything got really light and I floated a couple of feet into the air, I couldn’t help but hear that funny word as “lift” anyway.
I giggled. Being levitated broke the ice pretty well.
I warned her, “You don’t want my Dad thinking you’re a bad influence by exposing me to magic.”
We both looked at Dad. We both cracked up. He was trying so hard to look like he wasn’t bothered that his daughter believed in magic. It was really, really easy to laugh. Levitation made me feel like all the weights of the world had been removed. I curled up my legs and folded my arms in my lap, since they didn’t float quite as well.
“It’s nice to actually get to meet you, Penny. As something more than a pair of pigtails in the next room, I mean,” Marvelous told me, extending her hand.
I shook it. “It’s a little more personal now I’ve got powers of my own.”
That lit her eyes back up. “Oh, yeah. I heard we know for sure you’re inheriting the Akk Brain.”
Dad warned, “Don’t get her started. My little princess is impatient enough as it is.”
“Five bucks,” I chirped. Hey, I needed the money now that I’d blown the thousand from Cybermancer.
Marvelous nodded, giving me a more sympathetic and slightly more serious look. “Yeah, I know how that is. At your age I could cast one spell even close to reliably, and it drove me crazy that it took four more years of study to have enough powers to join the community.”
And, at that, the weirdest question popped into my head. I just had to know. “Did you really wear that costume? With the boots and the… black leather?”
That got a loud, long laugh. “And not much of it? Mmm-hmm.”
I gaped at her. “Seriously?”
She nodded. “Oh, yeah. When you turn eighteen, it will make complete sense.” Then she busted out laughing again. “Oh god, Brian. You should see your face!”
I couldn’t stop grinning. If Dad’s failed attempt to look unconcerned wasn’t funny enough, I was floating in midair talking costumes with a famous superheroine.
I tried to get serious. I leaned forward, crossed my arms over my knees and asked, “Isn’t a costume like that asking for trouble?”
Marvelous’s eyes shut tight, and she ducked her head down as she wrestled to force down the laughter. “She’s going to wear what she’s going to wear, Brainy,” Marvelous wheezed.
I didn’t think Dad’s stiff expression was that funny. Taking a deep breath, Marvelous straightened up and answered me mostly seriously. “It wasn’t a big deal. Believe it or not, most of the supervillains were real gentlemen, and the banter made some tense fights much less scary. The villains who weren’t gentlemen… well, nobody wants to get Judgment and Winnow’s attention.”
“Nobody wants to go back to the seventies,” inserted my father, scowling hard.
That got a more solemn nod from Marvelous. The joking seemed to be over. “I switched costumes because of civilians, not villains. The new outfit’s still not exactly modest, but the bystanders don’t act like pigs anymore.”
Fair enough. Another question loaded itself right onto my tongue. “You know about dragons, right? I saw one on TV, but it turned into a really ugly monster when it attacked Mech.”
“Big misconception,” she answered me immediately, giving her hair a theatrical toss. She’d obviously had to say this before. “Many monsters disguise themselves as dragons. Real dragons are very rare. They’re the guardians of the magic of the Earth, created by that magic before enough humans came around to drain it. They are ancient, wise, and powerful, the whole deal.”
“I’m not sure I’d give them ‘wise,’“ Dad interrupted, “‘Scheming,’ maybe, or ‘vicious.’ I’ve only seen a dragon do three things—sleep, decide if it wants to kill you, and try to kill you.”
Marvelous chuckled. “I didn’t say they were fond of humanity.”
“How many have you met?” I knew I wasn’t going to get an answer when my weight returned and I settled gently down onto my feet again.
Marvelous winked at me. “I promise to tell you some stories later. I’ll even introduce you to one when you become a superhero. For now, I gotta go.”
“Okay, but I’m holding you to that,” I insisted. By the time I was old enough to officially join the superheroes, I might figure out how to change sides.
“Later, Brian! Great to meet you, Penny!” Marvelous called back over her shoulder, walking off toward what was presumably her car. I dragged myself inside, feeling all heavy and tired again now that I wasn’t floating.
The evening passed somehow. Nothing that happened had to do with supervillainy, and I didn’t care. I wasn’t really interested until the next morning. I felt like lying around in bed again. I grabbed the pile of mechanical pencils I’d never thrown away or filled with new lead. One by one, I fed them into The Machine lying in my lap. While he added new scales made of plastic padded with eraser on the inside, Vera explored my room.
That consisted of hovering from object to object, staring at them and occasionally touching one. She had initiative, which The Machine didn’t. That was something. She’d taken orders yesterday. The next logical step was to try to communicate.
“What are you looking at?” I called over as she peered at the books on my bookshelf.
Her head swiveled around all the way until her mu
rky black pupil faced me, then turned back to the bookshelf. Absolute communications failure.
“Is there something you particularly like?” I tried. She’d spent more time staring at my statue of The Apparition than anything else, so the answer should be obvious. Again, she turned her head to look at me. This time the rest of her body rearranged to face me as well.
But that was it. No go.
“Go over there,” I ordered, pointing at my computer. She floated obediently over.
“Go into the closet,” I tried next. No pointing. She seemed to understand closet. She squeezed her small body through the gap of the mostly closed door without opening it further.
Okay, next test. “Open the door.” She pushed the door all the way open gently. Actually, that could have gone really wrong, couldn’t it? But it hadn’t. Deliberate understanding of context on her part? Maybe Vera was naturally gentle?
She obeyed well and had a good grasp of English. Exasperated, I waved a mechanical pencil around and demanded, “Can’t you talk to me?”
And she did, kind of. Vera responded with a few quiet bell ringing sounds. That was something.
“I just don’t know what that means.”
She replied with one high-pitched chime.
I lost a little more patience. “Talk to me in English!”
“Talk to me in English!” my voice ordered from my computer’s speakers, and my alarm clock, and my phone, and my disconnected headphones lying on my dresser. I heard more echoes of my voice from the rest of the house.
Oops.
I leaped out of bed, grabbed Vera by her head, whispered, “Sleep,” as I tapped it, and dumped her in a desk drawer out of sight all on the way to my bedroom door. Wrenching the door open, I yelled out, “Sorry! I did that! I think. I don’t know how.” I really hoped my panic sounded like frustration.
Dad stepped out of his office, grinning as he walked up the hall to meet me. “You’re trying too hard, Pumpkin. It’s great that you can make anything happen, but irreproducible accident after irreproducible accident will only make waiting harder.”
I gritted my teeth. “It bugs me to fail when I feel like I can do this, Dad!” That was the truth, and I didn’t have to fake the anger in my voice. I just wasn’t talking about inventing.
Dad sighed. He did the hair-ruffling thing, taking advantage of one of the few chances to get at my hair before I’d tied it down in braids. My hair rewarded him by frizzing out like a dandelion puff. “Well, you’ll have plenty of time to learn I’m right. Listen, Pumpkin, will you be okay here alone if your Mom and I go on a trip?”
What?
“What?” I repeated out loud.
His hand stayed on my head and he looked downright guilty as he explained. “Your Mom and I have been invited to a conference. We can’t bring you along, but we can cancel. It’s a situation where we don’t have to go, but we should go.”
Dad and Mom invited to a conference. “This is a superhero conference we’re talking about?” I guessed.
“A few supervillains will demand to attend. Spider will send a representative. It ensures no one takes advantage of half the superheroes in the country leaving their posts,” Dad confirmed.
I asked the real question. “For how long?”
Mom stepped out of the bedroom carrying a suitcase, and The Audit answered me. “At least one week, no longer than two. We’ll be down in San Diego, and if you need us all you have to do is call. It’s close enough we’ll drop by every couple of days.”
“Call me and let me know when you do,” I warned. Ouch. I couldn’t have sounded more defensive there if I’d tacked on “I might be robbing a bank.”
I was saved by parents hearing what they want to hear. Dad just sounded relieved as he asked, “So you don’t mind, Pumpkin? Beebee and I feel like older, cooler heads are required this time around. People who don’t fight every day.”
I felt a twinge of anxiety. “Is the community that freaked out about The Inscrutable Machine?”
“Only a couple of people. Like your mother,” Dad delivered, completely deadpan.
“And I have to go because everyone listens when The Audit speaks, but only The Audit listens when Brian Akk speaks,” Mom shot back from the kitchen.
Dad choked on a laugh and fixed his gaze on me again. “The community has been putting off a meeting like this for too long. The Inscrutable Machine was merely the last straw that made them schedule a meeting now. We’ll spend six hours deciding whether to send them back to their parents or to the courts when they’re caught, and another week and a half talking about territory, nonhuman threats, scary rumors, and whether the silence means Winnow and Judgment have finally killed each other.”
I tried to sound casual. Mom wouldn’t buy it, but she’d blame it on my being thirteen. “As long as there’s food in the house, I’ll be fine. I hope a conference of superheroes is as much fun as it sounds.”
“We’ll keep in touch,” Dad promised, stepping away from me.
Mom met him at the door of their bedroom and handed him another suitcase. They started to walk toward the door. Wait, they were leaving right now? I mean, not that that was a bad thing, but…
Maybe I wanted to slow them down. Maybe it had just nagged at me. A question leaped to my lips. “Dad, are The Inscrutable Machine the only active super powers my age? I saw this girl flying down the street wearing gray. I can’t even call it a costume.”
That stopped them both in their tracks. Okay, I’d hit a nerve. Dad’s worried look confirmed it, and the guarded way he asked, “When did you see her?”
No choice. I had to risk a flat-out lie. “Yesterday, while I was biking up Los Feliz.”
Mom answered for him. She had a scary poker face, but sounded pretty casual. “The community calls her Generic Girl, because she’s never identified herself. She’s been an active superhero for nearly a year. The public doesn’t know she exists.”
“How’d she pull that off?” I had to ask.
Dad didn’t have Mom’s poker face. He pinched up his nose, looking really uncomfortable, then sagged. “She doesn’t grandstand. She doesn’t even talk. She stopped a crime yesterday, and you saw her on the way there. Or back.”
I gave him an expectant look. Grudgingly, he kept on. “Yesterday, Chimera came back. He’s missing four decades and half his memories, but it’s him. We’re sure of it. He hit a bank just to get his name out. The public hasn’t found out because he’d knocked out one security guard when Generic Girl walked in the front door. Seconds later—”
“Fifteen seconds. I timed the security footage,” Mom inserted.
“—she walked out and flew away. Chimera was unconscious and taken into custody. Being Chimera, he may have escaped already. He had enough powers in his first incarnation to keep a few secret for emergencies.”
“So, really, Chimera? Because to beat him unconscious in fifteen seconds…” I trailed off, leaving the question hanging.
“That’s how strong she is, and how fast, and how ruthless. Most criminals we think she took down never know what hit them,” Dad confirmed.
“Wow.” That was all I could say, at least to my parents. I’d escaped disaster by a hair’s breadth on that landfill. A hair’s breadth and a magic coin. This was the standard I had to match next time.
Mom still looked cold, but sounded like she was trying to be gentle. “The community will spend more time discussing her than The Inscrutable Machine. They removed our last excuse to pretend she doesn’t exist.”
I tried to pull on a pigtail and had to brush back a pile of messy hair instead. “This conference is sounding less fun by the minute.”
Finally, Mom smiled, the last traces of The Audit being replaced by my mother. “We wouldn’t leave you if there weren’t serious issues to discuss, but it is still a bit of a party.”
I tried to match her smile. It wasn’t easy, after hearing all that! “Then… have fun?”
My parents picked up their bags. Dad opened the door,
Mom stepped out first, and just before Dad closed it behind the both of them he called back, “We’ll call!”
And then the door closed. I was alone for at least a week.
This could not possibly be more convenient.
Claire’s unnamed contact had better have a job ready.
I pulled up next to the warehouse in Santa Monica. I could almost see the ocean from here, that line opposite the mountains where the buildings ended. Claire’s source had better be right. If our target wasn’t here—actually, that was the great part. Someone would make up what we’d come here for.
But, for me, that wasn’t enough. I wanted to do things right.
Ray landed heavily on the pavement, legs bent in an elegant crouch despite the thump. I glanced up the way he’d come. He’d jumped off a light pole. Claire leaped over a fence in an alley, spun as she landed on her frictionless bear feet, and slid across the street to a neat stop on the other side of me. I stepped off my light bike and let it disappear. Sightseeing time had ended.
The fence in front of us was rather higher than the one Claire had jumped, and topped by barbed wire.
“The Machine?” Claire suggested.
I shook my head, thumbing three pills out of the canister on my belt. “It would take too long. Reviled, this fence is in my way.”
Ray flashed his wickedly too-wide grin. Stepping forward, he grabbed two fistfuls of chain, twisted his body, and yanked. Metal screeched. The chain link tore off its frame, hanging close enough to the ground to walk over. As he turned that grin back to me, I flicked one of the pills at him and another at Claire. In identical motions, their Serum-enhanced reflexes grabbed the pills out of the air.
“Swallow. Those will keep my toys off of you.” I took my own advice, tossing the pill into my mouth and swallowing it dry. It disintegrated anyway and tasted like sugar. Which it was. Mostly.
We stomped over the clanking ruins of the fence, making for a small metal door in the side of this big concrete building. Ray stepped ahead of us as we reached it, reared back, and kicked. The door snapped off its hinges and tumbled into the warehouse.
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