Recursion

by Marion G. Harmon

  “Shit, he’s on something,” Shell stated the obvious.

  “No, really?” He had to be, to ignore the hits he’d just taken. Then he reversed his field and punched it hard, nearly tearing out of my grasp as his weight multiplied by a factor of at least ten and his screaming climbed to almost a whistling pitch.

  “It’s killing him!” Shell’s panic matched mine as I dove for the ground to try and bleed off some of the relative gee-force crushing him against my hold. That wasn’t a solution for more than a couple seconds and I turned us into a curve as the ground rushed up. What could I do? If I let him go, he’d plummet to the ground at multi-gee speeds, if I held on then his own weight would kill him—he had to weigh hundreds of pounds under the gees he was putting on himself trying to get free of me and I had to stop him now.

  Wrapping my left arm around his neck so the inside of my bent arm gave his throat space, I carefully closed my hold on the sides of his neck and his carotid arteries and counted the seconds until hypoxia blacked him out. Feeling him go limp in my arms, I dropped us gently to the ground and released him.

  “Rush! Sandman Patch!” I called without looking up. Rush smacked a patch onto the back of his neck in a blur, and then I spent a horrible moment making sure he resumed breathing as I got him fully horizontal with as little movement of his limbs and spine as I could. The sedative-load of the patch would keep him out and stop him from killing himself in panic. If there were no bad drug interactions.

  Rush stopped speeding. “What happened?”

  I remembered to breathe for myself. “He’s on something. I broke him hitting him— The wall and he still— He fought me, he wouldn’t stop.” I got a little focus back, blinked. I hadn’t been paying any attention to our landing zone and now we were on a completely different street. “The building. Is everyone—”

  Rush laughed. “You didn’t hear it go down? I got everybody out and we’re in rescue mode now. Come on!”

  Nodding I stood, light-headed but shaking only a little as Rush disappeared in a blur. “Wagon ETA?” I queried, voice surprisingly steady. I could already hear the sirens.

  “Minutes,” Blackstone confirmed. “Then you have permission to leave him and assist Rush and SaFire with civilian casualties. Good job.”

  * * *

  The ambulance arrived with the special CPD paddy wagon, freeing me to return to the scene of the action. Rush dropped emergency blankets and collapsible stretchers beside me when I dropped into the parking lot he’d pulled all the victims out to. SaFire worked with her bag full of gear, monitoring the ones she didn’t want moved until help and better tools arrived to keep them stable and move them more safely. We barely exchanged two words, even bent over the same bystanders as she checked their securing straps before I flew them away. Only two bystanders required high-speed airlifts to waiting ERs, and then I was able to fly more slowly with the rest. I didn’t realize I was still in my mental Action Zone until I made my last airlift and flew back to the Dome.

  Then everything hit me. I’d broken a man. Badly. In the moment, with bodies already on the ground and the chance of the next second producing more, I hadn’t even thought about it. But fly-tackling him at my speed . . . I might as well have hit him with my car, and I’d known that. A lot of my training with Ajax had been learning how to safely fight opponents who didn’t have my superhuman strength, couldn’t take the kind of hits I could deliver.

  But, sixty-two bystanders.

  I barely noticed the walk from the flight bay to my rooms. Shell stayed quiet, and my only interaction with Blackstone was him telling me I’d been stood down and I could file my after-action report in the morning after we found out more.

  Not a great first day back.

  Chapter Three

  “Everything that lives, dies, and there is no fairness in life. We know that, all of us, as soon as we know what death is. Faith is the belief that there is something more. That beyond death there is something else. Justice for the wicked. Forgiveness for the penitent. Love for the forsaken. Reunion with all our dead. This is not mere wishful thinking, but an instinct born in each of us. We know there must be something more. This is why the good news of God, when we understand it, strikes us so powerfully. Therefore, we cannot set our hearts against each other, for God has set His heart on us.”

  Father Nolan

  * * *

  I woke from a sleep with no nightmares, not what I’d been expecting after yesterday. Better than that, this time my dream had been a memory of the memorial service we’d held at the Dome. Which should have been a nightmare but wasn’t. This time the smothering dark that rose to choke every memory of that day just wasn’t there, and without it my dream-self had focused on Father Nolan’s words. I didn’t remember anything after that little bit, but the rest of the night I’d felt . . . warm.

  And I still did, especially the part of me that was my right thigh. I raised up on my elbows and looked down.

  A very large, very warm seven tailed white fox slept nose-under-tails on the covers beside me, rumbling gently.

  I poked her. “Oh my gosh, you are not Graymalkin. How did you get in here, anyway?”

  Kitsune opened her eyes and yawned, stretched, and jumped down to exit the bedroom, her tails floating behind her like a short furry peacock’s fan. I heard my apartment door slide open and closed as she left my suite of rooms.

  What?

  What?

  “Now that’s weird,” Shell said.

  Giving a sharp shriek, I nearly levitated out of bed. She sat right by my pillow.

  “How many times do I have to say it? Don’t pop in like that! Knock! Whistle! Put a freaking bell on!”

  She just laughed. Today her t-shirt said So, that happened . . .

  “Adrenaline is the breakfast of champions! Also, Wheaties. Besides, if she didn’t just freak you out . . .”

  I pushed my hair out of my eyes. “So, what was that?”

  “Foxes are social animals. She doesn’t like sleeping alone?”

  “Really? That’s what you’ve got?”

  My cell chimed with a text from Megan. How R U?

  I grinned, and texted her a smiley face. Your turn?

  Don’t fight it, sister.

  LOL. I’m okay. L8r.

  L8r.

  My cell didn’t buzz, so I’d passed Megan’s morning check—there’d be no call. My grin stayed on, even when Shell cocked her eyebrow.

  “You heard me. I’m okay. Later.”

  “Maaaaybe,” she said slowly. “Look at the time.”

  I did. “Shoot!” The mystery of my new sometimes-furry teammate had to wait; a quick check told me that I was on the Base Reserve Roster today, but I still dressed fast for the Day Briefing.

  * * *

  Blackstone always had us attend the Day Briefing in costume, whatever our status on the day’s roster. It was a redundant rule in my case; we often hosted visitors and I didn’t leave the Dome’s Residence Level without my mask. Today our visitors were Detective Fisher and a . . . Texas Ranger?

  Kitsune arrived before I did, meeting my raised eyebrow with an unreadable smile before she turned back to her conversation with Quin. Distracted, I took a seat between Seven and Rush and studied Fisher’s partner. He sat relaxed but straight, his white cowboy hat set on the table in front of him. Even sitting down he looked long and lean, stretched out and weathered by the sun. His neatly creased tan button-down shirt was mostly hidden by a tailored body armor vest with shoulder guards decorated with star-and-crescent crests. The detective slouched in his chair beside the man, wearing the same rumpled suit I’d seen him in yesterday. Physically, they looked a lot alike; their sartorial choices and body language made them look like the hilariously mismatched pair in a buddy-cop movie.

  Blackstone opened the meeting and caught us up on the details of last night; the event on Ashland had been a small late-night rally supporting the National Public Safety Act. The political reaction to the California Quake, the bill requ
ired registration and monitoring of all breakthroughs and even “secure supervision” of marginal breakthroughs. It was gaining traction with a lot of people, and Humanity First members had made up only half the audience last night.

  Not that everyone there had been there supporting the bill; our gravikinetic had gotten in a shouting match with Debra Gardner, a speaker and local organizer who according to Blackstone liked to write long editorials about the “superhuman threat.” Things had gone south from there and the CPD was still investigating the incident.

  Then Blackstone turned the meeting over to Lei Zi and she caught us up on the big event of the morning; we watched video of New York City’s SPAT—Superhuman Powers and Tactics—teams fighting a Godzilla that came out of the Atlantic just before their sunrise. They’d managed to stop it in Lower Manhattan, but its EMP field and plasma-jet had done a lot of damage, almost as much as the one that hit Tokyo two weeks ago. Godzillas. Really.

  “Is plural for Godzilla godzillas, or godzilla?” Shell whispered. “You know, like sheep?”

  I slapped a hand over my mouth before my bark of laughter could escape and mortally embarrass me. And she saw, darn it, I knew our new field leader saw. It so didn’t help. I was going to find a way to kill me a quantum-ghost.

  Lei Zi ended her presentation with news that we would be doing close analysis of the Tokyo and New York attacks and work on tactics and drills to counter any Godzilla that waded ashore in the Great Lakes. Then Blackstone took back the meeting to introduce the ranger.

  “I’m sure you’ll welcome Agent Elijah Quinn, codename Ambrosius. Ambrosius is with the Texas Department of Safety Superhuman Response Division. That’s a mouthful, so the Texas media just calls them the White Hats. Ambrosius joins us to assist with Detective Fisher’s case. Agent?”

  Ambrosius stood up. He went a long way up.

  “Thank you, sir. Everyone. Call me Eli if you don’t want to use the media-moniker.” He nodded to Blackstone and the Assembly Room’s big screen brought up a split-screen picture of a man. The face didn’t exactly scream supervillain; his most prominent features were a pair of aggressive black eyebrows and a moustache that looked like it was their mama. The second picture showed an altered image with a little eyebrow-trimming and no mustache on a tanned but completely forgettable face.

  “That’s Douglas Barnett, a very bad man. He’s from Arizona, and a suspect in several killings in Texas over the last couple of years. Those are just the one’s we’re pretty sure about. He’s classed as a high-powered pyrokinetic, though really he’s a thermokinetic and not a fire-starter per se. What he does is transfer thermal energy from the local environment into his target. Yesterday’s killing in your Dearborn projects exactly matches his power-signature, and when the DSA passed us Detective Fisher’s report I hopped on a plane.”

  The image included a notice of Barnett’s issued General Warrant. A bad man for sure. A breakthrough with lethal powers like his, who failed to voluntarily surrender, could only expect a General Warrant: permission for anyone strong enough to stop him to bring him in, dead or alive.

  “What’s his thing?” Seven asked.

  “Money, mostly,” Ambrosius said. “He’s smart, but unstable—he’s got a burning rage fired by a deep persecution complex. Former associates say he likes to get drunk and blame whoever’s handy whether it’s the feds, the Mexican federales, the cartels, local bike gangs, anybody who doesn’t give him respect. He’s stayed ahead of us for two years down south, hopping back and forth across the Mexican border, but Chicago isn’t Doug’s home territory so he may be easier to find. If it’s him then I don’t know what he’s doing up here, but we’re willing to devote money and man-hours to taking this shot at chasing him down.”

  “BOLOs have been sent to all patrol officers and the Guardian teams,” Blackstone added, “and Eli’s been assigned to Detective Fisher’s team for as long as he’s here. We’re also giving them Kitsune to assist the investigation in any way she can. With everything going on, now isn’t the time for a new villain to start dropping bodies around Chicago.”

  Heads nodded around the table.

  “And that’s it everyone, let’s make this a good day.”

  “Godzilla drills,” Rush muttered beside me as the meeting broke up. “Paranoid, much? Chicago’s a fresh-water port, we’re a thousand miles from the coast!”

  I shrugged. “Maybe, but it’s an opportunity for her to see how we train together. And for us to get a feel for her leadership style.”

  He looked me up and down. “Who are you, and what have you done with Little A?”

  “I buried her in the backyard,” I returned and he choked. Seven just laughed as I left them, but Blackstone appeared at my elbow before I left the room. “Astra, see me in my office?”

  He kept moving, not moving fast but not dallying.

  “Shell? What’s going on?”

  “We’re okay,” she assured me, but her tone didn’t inspire confidence.

  I loved Blackstone’s cozy office and its vaudeville dressing room vibe, walls covered with vintage show posters of the original Blackstone the Magician, shelves full of books on stage magic and serious awards won against some of the best pre-Event performers. Any other time I would have taken a moment or two to just luxuriate in its opulent mystique, but when I arrived behind him, he closed the door and waved me to a chair without a word.

  Since the night of the funerals when he held me as I fell apart Blackstone had adopted an almost grandfatherly role with me, but now his expression was all business.

  He didn’t leave me wondering why I was here. “The gravikinetic you met last night died around five o’clock this morning. Hope?”

  My ears started buzzing and all the blood had drained from my face, leaving me cold. I had to look white as snow. I swallowed twice, nodded. “Cause of death?” Me.

  “There’s no way to be certain. The mask-cam recording of the action gives us three sources of trauma—when you hard-tackled him, when you took him with you through the wall, and when he crushed himself trying to escape. The drugs in his system complicated the trauma center’s attempts to stabilize him. I’m told that he flatlined three times before they finally called it.”

  I nodded. Of course I nodded, hands folded in my lap where they’d be safe. “Anytime there’s a death . . .”

  “The cape involved is placed on modified duty pending the completion of an investigation, yes. That’s why I took you off the patrol roster.” He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Hope, I know you wanted to be on our Mirth Watch, and you’re not to blame. You—and Shell—read the situation quickly and correctly. I gave approval for your response. And while it’s impossible to say with confidence what might have happened with a gentler approach, no civilians died last night. Thanks to you, there were no innocent victims. I want you to remember that, with everything that’s going to happen.”

  I didn’t need to ask what was going to happen. It would be a media circus. “Who was he?”

  “Benjamin Trent. No criminal record, only one surviving family member, a known breakthrough who just . . . drifted. Longshoreman, stevedore. He used his gravity control for off-the-books work, lived in fleabag hotels, drank, and bought fentanyl and heroin on the street.”

  “An opioid addict?”

  “Apparently. Had a legitimate prescription for a back injury, first.”

  “He doesn’t sound like someone who was a threat to anybody, and opiates wouldn’t make him go crazy like that, right? Why—”

  Blackstone held up a hand. “Don’t. The media will be all over that question, and speculate endlessly unless we find out more than we already know. And they’ll ask why you had to go in hard. We’ll tell them that Rush couldn’t get in to evacuate anybody as long as the gravity field remained to make him fall sideways, and that the field threatened the structural integrity of the building. You couldn’t have simply tried to render Mr. Trent unconscious on the spot, since we had no knowledge of the upper limits
of his power—he could have brought the whole building down in one panicked burst, with Rush still locked out.”

  He sighed. “And nobody who is already inclined to think ill of you will buy any of that. Somebody will write that you panicked, that we’re covering for you. A few people will believe it, and they’ll be very loud about it.”

  I took my hands from my lap and sat on them, my pulse thundering in my ears. “How bad is it going to get for the team?”

  “We’ll survive. What we’re not going to do is hide you away in the Dome. That will make it look worse. You’re off patrol until the panel review and investigation is finished—and until you pass a fresh psych-eval—but you’re still on Dome Watch for emergencies and we’ll get you back out there as soon as we can.” He grimaced, looked apologetic. “You may have contact with the press—Quin won’t want you to duck all on-the-street encounters with them—but she’ll help you prep for them. . . .”

  Given the opportunity to say something, I had nothing.

  “Will you be up for it? We can always keep you here, or even send you away for training. . . .”

  Hearing him offer me an out broke my paralysis.

  “No.” I shook my head, breathed. “I’ll be fine, really. And I’ll say what Quin wants me to say.”

  He studied me for a long moment. He did that a lot, these days. “Thank you. And we need you out there. The team— Well, having you back makes it better. And,” he gave me a smile, the first genuine one I’d seen today, “you’ll have help.”

  “Help?”

  “Your new Dispatch wingman. Shell?”

  “Ta-daaaah!” Shell appeared in an open-armed See what you’ve won! pose behind Blackstone’s desk. Her t-shirt said Official Wingman, and she wore one of the security lanyards all the non-cape Dome staff but Willis wore.