Blackstone obviously had his earbud in—he smiled at the screen of his epad, looked back up at me.
“The selling point on this has been Shell’s ability to provide instantaneous real-time analysis, her quick identification of our breakthrough’s power last night being the perfect example. And—” He coughed pointedly. “. . . there is her access to certain files we don’t talk about. Her cover will be as a very smart, but socially isolated, off-site operator. She has all the protocols down, and I think this is also the perfect means to allow her to begin building the sort of track record of cooperation and trust that will be important when dealing with the justly paranoid Powers That Be.”
I didn’t know what to say; it was everything we’d hoped for and a bit more. Shell wasn’t a person, not in the eyes of the law. If the government could locate her “home,” the hidden 22nd Century computer that maintained the Future Files and her quantum-ghost matrix, then they’d have seized it long ago. They’d be studying and maybe dismantling her in a lab somewhere. But someday the laws would change, and now when they did Shell would have years of living and working with the Sentinels.
If I could keep her out of trouble. That was a big if.
Blackstone let me go after going over the rest of my day’s schedule with me, which amounted to an appointment in the afternoon to see Dr. Mendel again before heading off to classes at U of C, where I could further reassure the Bees that I was okay.
I went back downstairs to work out and think.
Chapter Four
“Last night’s incident, which nearly ended in tragedy for multiple attendees, shows why the National Public Safety Act is so important. Law enforcement knew about this guy. They knew he was a drug addict, he was unstable and could kill with his power. So why wasn’t he in an institution or at least restricted?”
Hard Talk Radio Show caller.
* * *
Bong-bong.
The big steel spring backed strike-plate I used as a punching bag rang. I had the Residence Level gym to myself, and had changed into shorts and a t-shirt so I could sweat.
Bong-bong.
Quick left-right jabs warmed the plate, the attached force meter telling me how many Newtons each therapeutic punch packed.
Bong-bong.
I was alone—nobody wanted to be here without ear protection when I really worked my frustrations out on the plate and I’d sent Shell away (for whatever that meant, exactly, with our connection). I’d said I had to think, she’d huffed but given me my space. She knew when I just couldn’t share.
Bong-bong!
I read the force meter, winced, stopped to blow on my stinging knuckles. The strike-plate glowed dull orange in my infrared vision, warmed by force-to-heat transfer. Deep breaths.
I’d killed a man. Not intentionally, but knowingly. I’d known I was at least going to hurt him. Bad.
Bong-bong.
I’d known. Not about him, but I’d known I would kill people. Ajax had spelled it out in a lecture during one of my first training sessions.
“You’re a weapon, Hope. Like me. Like Atlas. If you wear the cape, sooner or later you’ll be fighting someone who can’t take the hits we can, who you’ve got to stop hard anyway. For all the good that you’ll do, you’re going to hurt some people. You’re going to kill them.”
Bong-bong.
And Benjamin Trent wasn’t the first. He wasn’t even the second or third—I was pretty sure that those spots went to Ripper and Volt. Before that was the kill I was famous for now, Seif-al-Dinn, and maybe one or two other Ring terrorists in the chaos of the attack. I wasn’t even sure of my number of kills.
Bong-bong.
“And until you kill someone, you won’t know if your head’s going to be right with it.”
Well, I still didn’t know.
Bong-bong. Bong-bong!
The strike-plate glowed yellow under my hammer blows—still light invisible to everyone else, but too hot for an unpowered person to touch without protection.
BONG!
The force meter flashed a stress warning and I collapsed against the plate, breathing hard. If I broke it, it would come out of my luxurious pay. Putting my back to it, I slid to the floor.
“Damn it!” I pounded the plate with the back of my head. “Shell, you can come out now.”
“‘Damn it?’” She sat beside me in her own workout clothes. “Pretty salty language from you, missy.”
“So tell Mom. Oh, wait, you can’t.” I let my head fall back. “Sorry, that was— Sorry.”
She didn’t say anything, which meant I’d hurt her but she’d forgive me. I touched her hand, or put my hand where hers rested on the floor, trusting that her own virtual feedback program would interpret it as touch for her.
“Does it make me a terrible person, that what I’m really upset about isn’t that I killed someone last night?”
“Really?”
I sniffed, wiped my nose. The breathing and punching had kept all weepy tears at bay, but my nose was more honest. “Really.” Why wasn’t I a complete wreck? I should have been. Maybe it’d hit me all at once later and I’d just completely lose it.
“So what has got you freaked?”
“Besides not being freaked? It’s what Blackstone said—people who already hate me are just going to use this as one more thing.” I’d made this worse, with everything else. Blackstone hadn’t tried to soften it, and I appreciated that, and it sucked.
I’d been the hero, in the Whittier Base Attack. The one who flew President Touches Clouds to safety, the one who killed the Califate terrorist who’d slaughtered Atlas, Ajax, and who knew how many US soldiers.
Then news got out of my stupid, vain shopping expedition to Forever 21 and Victoria’s Secret, right in the middle of earthquake-wrecked L.A., before flying off with Atlas for those two days of mandated R&R late in the post-quake cleanup.
I really hadn’t thought enough about the newsies still pushing the angle that I was really a minor, so the story blew us up two ways. One camp posthumously smeared Atlas with statutory rape. And even people who took my word that, yes, I was eighteen and a college first-year in my private identity, looked at our nine-year age difference, at Atlas’ playboy reputation, and bought into the narrative of an abusive teacher/student relationship. He’d taken advantage of my innocence. Or I’d seduced him. Or both; I was a Lolita and he was a predator. It seemed like hardly anyone believed that nothing happened. We’d kissed, that was it.
Of course that was the public. Family was different. Mom had believed me from the start, and Dad came around eventually.
It wasn’t that Mom had a special faith in me, at least I didn’t think I’d earned more trust than most kids got from their parents. It was that Mom had had the mortifying Sex Talk with me when I “became a young woman.” She hadn’t hit the medical side of it much (though she did check off all those screamingly embarrassing boxes first). Nope, after making sure I knew what I needed to know to Do the Deed “safely,” she catechized me on the Church’s teachings, and then informed me that a lot of people saw just about everything to do with sex differently than the Church did.
And she really hit everything, from pre-marital sex (all flavors from hooking up to intimate relationships and living together) to lesbian sex.
And Mom had explained that, in their heads, everyone lived in their own country when it came to sexual morality. They usually inherited the map of their country from their parents, and for them it represented The Way Things Were, good and bad, and covered a lot more than just sex.
She’d finished up by getting my commitment to the Church’s map—No Premarital Sex—and made me promise that, if I ever decided to change my map for any reason, I’d see her first for a refresher on the medical side of it. And she’d given me my Saint Agnes medal to wear. Since I’d never seen her for the refresher and still wore the medal, to her that meant she could trust my word about me and Atlas.
But almost nobody who didn’t know me as Hope believe
d that those two days of our getaway had been nothing more than kisses and cuddles, so I’d blown up both our reputations. The muckrakers had even drawn comparisons between us and Burnout’s skeevy underage-groupie action. Eeww. I wanted to shower every time I thought about it.
And then I’d opened my mouth to a reporter over the National Public Safety Act debates. The words fascist and dumb had been the kindest part of my statement. That had alienated the half of the country who thought that increased monitoring of breakthroughs was a good idea after one of them had destroyed southern California.
Could I explain to anyone that the Dark Anarchist’s endgame with the California Quake was the National Public Safety Act? The first steps to a near-totalitarian government? No, I couldn’t. Even if I could, Quin had made me swear to respond to all future political questions with “no comment,” and our public relations people had downplayed my comment by oh so subtly alluding to my youth and inexperience.
That had been strike two, leaving far fewer fans in my corner than I’d had right after the funeral. And the ones I still had didn’t have the highest opinion of my maturity and professionalism, which meant plenty of people would listen to criticism of my actions last night. And they’d doubt Blackstone’s judgement in fielding me.
“It’ll blow over, you know.” Shell put her hand on top of mine when I didn’t go on. “Get a few big saves under your belt, and, well, look at Rush.” I sputtered as she laughed.
“Rush? You want me to follow Rush’s public strategy?”
“Well you want them to treat you like an adult . . .”
I fell into hysterical giggles myself. “So, bury my scandal under one even more outrageous? Should I make Blackstone the next target for my seductive wiles?”
“Hey, you know Chakra’d be okay with it. She’d teach you technique.”
I shuddered, still giggling. “Heads would explode, literally explode, if Quin let us float a story like that.”
“It would bury the whole teen ingénue thing.”
I shook my head, wiped away laughter tears.
“Thanks, I’ll pass. But I do know at least one thing I can do right now. It’s not much, but it’ll help.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re my Dispatch wingman now—check my schedule with Andrew. I need a wardrobe upgrade, the sooner the better.”
* * *
The morning news-and-commentary cycle turned into the predicted PR slaughter. Talking heads used the near tragedy of the “attack on a gathering of concerned citizens” as more evidence that the National Public Safety Act, or something like it, was urgently needed. Other pundits focused on the fact that someone had shot at Mr. Trent—nobody knew the full sequence of events yet, but it looked like an off-duty cop had fired the shot after Mr. Trent had pushed someone with his power. That’s when he’d lost it and pinned everyone to the walls by making them floors.
And naturally, the talking heads asking whether a normal suspect with a gun would have been treated just as fatally, questioned my actions.
That lit up my cell with texts from the Bees: RUOK? from Julie, pizza & icecream! from Annabeth, and an obscene comment on the worth of Monday-morning quarterbacks from Megan. Mom just texted LVU.
I responded privately where nobody would hear me sniffling, and then folded up the drama and trauma I labeled Mr. Trent, put it in a box in my head, and closed the lid. Of all the comments, Megan’s was the most bracing one, echoing one of her own pet phrases. Deal with your own crap, not everyone else’s. The crapshow (not quite the word Megan used) belonged to someone else now, and beyond the few things I could do about it, it wasn’t my stinking mess to deal with.
I looked forward to seeing the Bees at school, maybe getting that promised Pizza and Ice Cream Night tonight after classes.
And then the explosion on 37th and Racine derailed my day.
Chapter Five
Not all states use the CAI (Crisis Aid and Intervention) model—teams of certified, government-paid superheroes hired as independent contractors—and some states or cities use CAIs on one level but not another. New York State allows local CAI teams, but New York City does not; it depends on its SPAT (Super Powers and Tactics) squads, uniformed superhuman police officers. Texas has its local CAI city teams, but supports the towns and counties too small to host local teams with the uniformed White Hats of its Superhuman Response Division. The White Hats also provide support when local teams find themselves up against more than they can handle alone. Needless to say, disputes over jurisdictions make relations between locals and White Hats interesting.
Barlow’s Guide to Superhumans
* * *
Being able to fly means you always get there before the cops and the fire department, but the burning warehouse below us looked empty—a huge relief to me. I dropped Riptide (he could “fly” in his waterspout form but the February air would have frozen him solid) and dove into the smoke.
My fast search of the building revealed nobody to rescue today. “Dispatch, emergency medical services can stand down, firetrucks only.”
“Fire services only, understood. They’ll be onsite in three minutes.”
I smiled at the professional tenor of Shell’s Dispatch Voice while doubling my sweep of the flaming interior. The fire engulfed the loading dock half the warehouse, and a quick check told me Riptide had the outer perimeter contained, first dowsing the half-dozen burning semi-trailer rigs in the fenced warehouse lot to ensure the fires wouldn’t spread to neighboring businesses. He turned his twin water-jets on the building as firetrucks roared into the lot and the men deployed.
“He’s not going to leave the CFD anything to do.”
“In this weather? Hey, they’ll thank him.” Dousing the whole building still took cooperation—even Riptide couldn’t pull that much water out of the air and I worked at breaking open burning interior spaces so the water could reach them.
Whatever had been stored here, under the smoke and char the place smelled like a whiskey distillery and by the time I’d finished I looked like a drowned chimney sweep, covered head to toe in black ash. Standing beside me in the icy slush of the lot as the boys drowned the smoking remains, Fire Captain Finnigan shook my hand. “Good to see you back, Astra. And I like the new guy.”
I grinned cheekily. Zero-fatality emergency work really was my favorite thing. “Challenge him at your next chili cookoff. His family’s Mexican from Cali.” I looked around at the smoking building and charred skeletons of trailer rigs. Water ran everywhere, freezing into ice. “When the weather’s warmer, of course.” The news crews arriving and unloading outside the fence didn’t look at all happy with the temperature.
The captain followed my gaze, smiled. “Thanks, we’ll do that. Did you see what started this?”
“I did.” Kitsune stood beside us.
I managed not to jump. “Where did you— Okay, who were you?”
She laughed, giving me a wink and smiling at the captain. “You’re catching on. I was the concerned citizen who called it in. And ‘till a second ago I was one of the hot firemen. I wanted a first look inside.”
Captain Finnigan didn’t look amused. “I thought I counted one too many. And you are?”
I made the introductions automatically. “Captain, meet Kitsune. She’s with us. Kitsune, Captain Finnigan.”
He shook her hand, looking her over. Her “costume”—tight jeans and red leather jacket and domino mask—didn’t scream cape so much as cape-groupie, but he took me at my word. “And you saw where it started?”
Her smile widened into an easy grin. “The open loading dock. And this is what started it.” Bending down, she pointed out a piece of melted glass.
He picked it up, rolled it between his fingers. “Glass.”
“And whatever was in it. There were a bunch of crates.” Her mimed explosion and sound effects gave us a good idea what happened to the crates.
And what was Kitsune doing here watching crates explode? The captain’s look asked
the same question, but he just fell into step with me when I started walking.
Hopping up onto the ledge of the blown-up loading dock, I scanned the warehouse and then turned to eyeball the parking lot. Starting with the ground at my feet, I worked my way outward as Kitsune and the captain watched patiently.
“Shell?” I called. “Could you let Blackstone know Detective Fisher probably needs to see this?” I turned to my two followers. “Captain? Could you ask your men to clear the building? Riptide and I’ll keep an eye on things until the detective releases the scene.”
Captain Finnigan sighed and grabbed his walkie-talkie. “Okay boys, unless you see flames, everybody out!”
* * *
The detective’s arrival with several squad cars stirred the news crews. Ambrosius rode with him, and the two of them joined Riptide, Kitsune, and me where I stood on the loading dock arms tightly folded.
I wasn’t freaking out. I was working very hard on that.
“Captain, everyone.” Fisher said. “So, what have you got for us?” When I pointed at the concrete lip we stood on he bent down, ran a hand over the streaks of melted glass stuck there, looked up.
“Good catch, kid. Anything else?”
“Over here.” I led everyone further into the building, to a low section of scorched wall. “The white bits stuck there? Pieces of bone.” I hadn’t found anyone in the warehouse on my first search, living or dead—but I hadn’t been looking for really blown up pieces of people. “And there’s this.” Not far away, a piece of half-burned label stuck to the floor.
He nodded, looked around, pulled a cigarette and lit up. “What do you think happened?”
I shrugged. “Kitsune says the explosion was a large stack of crates. I think your thermokinetic did it. I think he explosively heated a few crates of whiskey bottles. The explosion blew up the rest of the crates and set everything on fire.” There were unmelted fragments of glass everywhere, too. I’d missed the smell of charred flesh, so familiar from yesterday, under the overwhelming smell of burned everything else. The victim, or victims, had to have been right on top of the whiskey, been ripped apart by flying glass and wood slivers, and the fire had nearly destroyed the evidence.
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