So much for a day when nobody died.
The detective nodded but Ambrosius’ forehead wrinkled. “Barnett came all the way to Chicago to blow up booze?”
“Expensive booze. Macallan’s Twenty-Five Year Sherry Oak Highland Single Malt.” I recognized the half-burned label; one of Dad’s clients had gifted him with a bottle at the completion of a contract. “About two thousand dollars a bottle?” The client had let him know that, too.
“The warehouse is city property,” Shell told me through her Dispatch link. “Taken when a shipping company went bankrupt last year.”
“And Dispatch says the building is vacant. Or should have been.”
Now Ambrosius was nodding too. “So, smugglers. Got it. That could mean the kind of money Barnett would ask for a job.”
“Well . . .” I looked around again. “Not just smugglers. Counterfeiters?”
Detective Fisher turned his attention back to me. “Go on.”
“Counterfeiting luxury booze is big business. So they bring in fifty cases, label the bottles here, and sell them under the table to high end whiskey wholesalers who charge restaurants and private buyers a ‘discounted’ price for off-the-books sales. Fifty crates? That would be close to a million dollars on the loading dock.”
The detective chuckled. “Fits. And whether or not that’s what this was, it gives me a reason to call in the Organized Crime Department. The OCD boys have a bigger budget for investigations. Phelps!” A lean, sour-faced man joined us. “Get with OCD, find out what they know about bootleggers who might have been using the building. And make sure the uniforms tape off the whole warehouse. We’re going over it with tweezers and little brushes.”
The new detective pulled out his phone and turned away.
“Thanks, Astra. I don’t know what we would have lost in the city cleanup otherwise. Anything else?”
I shook my head. “No, that’s it.”
“Then leave us Riptide? I want to see if he’s any good at pulling the water out of an area without disturbing it much.”
“Oh, that’ll work out well,” Shell laughed as I laughed at the thought of Riptide the ex-gang member, Detective Fisher, and Ambrosius working together. I stepped away to let Riptide know.
* * *
Blackstone very carefully didn’t sound concerned, but he had probably been keeping tabs in Dispatch. He informed me he’d taken me off the roster for the rest of the day—the implication being that I was done until Dr. Mendel cleared me. Again.
That was more than okay with me. Between everything yesterday and now this I was beginning to wonder why I’d been in such a rush to get back into the field.
And what was Kitsune doing here this morning? The part of me that had thought about it at all had assumed she was in Chicago checking out something for Japan’s Defensenet Intelligence. But how did that connect with Ambrosius’ pyrokinetic? If she was looking for Barnett from the get-go wouldn’t she have said something?
“Shell?” I whispered as I lifted away from the scene. “Could you reschedule my psych-eval?” I’d missed it in the fire-response.
“Sure.” Shell sounded subdued. “But good news, you’ve got an appointment right now with Andrew if you want it.”
That lifted my mood a bit. “I’ll take it. If he’ll let me grab a quick shower first?”
He could, I did, and half an hour later I walked into Andrew’s Designs. Andrew greeted me in his studio with a handshake, my own hand disappearing in his huge, muscular grip that went with the rest of his rugged triathlon-athlete’s body.
“So, what prompted the sudden need for another wardrobe change? Not that I’ll ever complain of repeat business.”
“Public relations. The whole kid-sidekick thing is kicking my butt and I need to come across more adult. It’s also time to retire the black.” That last bit crystalized in my head as I said it. How could it not have occurred to me that wearing mourning colors, more than a month after the funerals, was only feeding the tabloids ammunition?
“I can work with that.” Andrew’s smile widened and he gestured to the sofa. Retrieving a box and epad from a side table, he sat down next to me.
“The good news is that I’d worked up an Astra 2.0 for when you graduated from sidekick status. Quin helped.” He patted the box he’d set beside him. I laughed, rolling my eyes. Of course he’d gotten Quin’s help; the project would have been another perfect excuse for him to woo her.
“But before I show it to you, I’d like to show you another concept. I worked this up after reviewing the new European cape-lines at Paris Fashion Week last fall.”
He handed me his epad and I took it with a frown. Europe’s capes were more formally part of the EU’s security apparatus than American CAI teams were of our own law-enforcement agencies, but the Continental Guard still went all-in for the costumes. France’s capes were on the cutting edge of super hero fashion, and made a splash at Paris Fashion Week every year. I looked at the image he’d put on the screen.
Well, that’s new.
Departing from my original vested outfit, this costume would cover me head to toe. White tights covered what the leotard body didn’t, but the leotard’s legs had been cut so high in the hips that it made a V pointing right at my crotch; only the opaque tights saved it from salacious indecency.
“Ummm . . .”
“Turn the page.”
I flipped to the next image. “Oh, heck no.” The back view of the costume showed the high-cut legs turning into what was nearly a thong back.
“The cape will cover you most of the time.”
“Only most of the time? Andrew, I draw the line at any style that shows my butt as separate cheeks!”
“It’s a nice butt. You’re not a stick.”
“Cheeks, Andrew. No cheeks.” Just picturing wearing the costume in public made my face burn hot. “Why even go this way? What was Quin thinking?”
“Quin was thinking of maturing your look. The teen sidekick look worked for your introduction, but we assumed you wouldn’t want to stick with it.”
I looked at the first image again. It was certainly more dramatic. It accented my curves, too (what little I had). That would help disrupt the narrative of some of the media—especially the tabloids—about my perceived immaturity. Maybe with a fix on the legs and butt . . . “Maybe. With changes.”
Andrew shrugged, the corner of his mouth twitching. “So now Quinn owes me dinner. This is what I came up with first.” He opened the box and slid it across to my lap.
A new mask sat on top, the same cut as my current half-mask but in my original blue. Under it lay a folded white cape. It felt like satin although I could tell it was tougher, and it sported my eight-pointed star crest in blue. Lifting it out, I saw that it would hang shorter than my current black cape. Under that . . .
“Another two-piece? Really?” I held up the surprisingly heavy top, way briefer than the vest had been, shaking my head. Andrew put up a staying hand.
“Try it on first, and I’ll explain.” His half-smile was gone; now we were in his territory.
I huffed, sighed, and stood. He’d gone through all the trouble to prototype this costume; the least I could do was try it on.
The same dressing screen from my first visit with Quin waited for me in the corner, and one quick-change with minimal adjustment later I stepped out in front of the mirrors where Andrew joined me. He tugged on my shoulder buckles and fluffed the cape. “Now look at yourself.”
Okay . . . I took a breath and looked myself over.
The blue, midriff-baring top started at my sternum but covered me to my neck. Heavy buckles held my cape, and from the way they connected to the webbing layer of the top I could see the whole thing was designed to be a harness. With the right gear, I could strap stuff to me for hands-free flight. Nice, but I frowned.
My costumes had all subtly enhanced my sadly non-existent bust, but this one took it a step further and my lack of height made the difference more dramatic than it really w
as. If I wore it, would the press make a big deal about my changing measurements?
Hah. The usual suspects would, but physical enhancement was totally part of the superhero gig. Lots of superheroines who went the traditional costume route had falsies built into their tops (sometimes bottoms, too, for butts and thighs), and Atlas’ costumes had included built in muscle-falsies. So I could pad my bra, right?
I sighed, moving on. The shorts were thicker material than my previous bottoms had been, too, with loops for the heavy belt that topped them. Andrew had incorporated my holdout throwing disk in the big buckle. There was nothing wrong with the new bottom’s boy-short cut, and the waist wasn’t low, but . . . When I rested my gloved hands on my bare stomach, Andrew tugged them down to my sides.
“Tell me what you see.”
“Okay . . . Um.” I fiddled with the cape, tugging where it ended just past the shorts’ leg-line, and looked at it all together. It wasn’t immodest. It didn’t go for cleavage (like I had any), or draw attention to my butt like the sketch Andrew had shown me. If it wasn’t a costume, I’d have no problem wearing it as a cover-up on the beach. It still felt . . .
Andrew sighed at my silence. “Look at what’s not there.”
Huh? I looked at myself again, starting with the new boots and working my way up. I stopped halfway and blinked. Oh. Wow.
“I’m . . .”
Superficially I looked like any other teen-idol superheroine, though the enhancement did make me look more my real age. But going back to bare limbs and now a bare midriff highlighted a detail I saw in the mirror every day now without thinking about it.
I’d gotten buff. Female-buff, girly-buff yeah, but . . .
I’d always been physically fit. I’d gone out for field hockey to prove I could be as tough as my sports-crazy brothers, but it had become my high school passion and I’d trained for it. Field hockey was a contact sport, I’d been a defender, and until my breakthrough I’d had scars to prove it. They’d faded and disappeared quickly, which hadn’t surprised Dr. Beth at all, and the training regimen he’d put me on had really started to develop my upper-body strength. Post-Whittier Base, my PT program had been more of the same and I’d pushed it even further. Working out to the point of physical exhaustion was a great way to shut off my brain and just not think.
So the past months had given my shoulders, biceps, waist, and stomach some real definition, and though my outfits hadn’t exactly hidden the changes Andrew’s new costume showed off my newly toned muscles.
I stroked my stomach, smile stretching into a grin at the subtle but solid six-pack I saw in the mirror, my abdominal muscles clearly distinct and separate from my obliques. There was nothing I’d ever be able to do about my pixie-size, but now I was looking at a girl who showed some muscle. Meeting her on the street, I’d wonder if she was into kick-boxing or mixed martial arts. Cute but tough would be a good description.
“Andrew, you’re a genius.”
“I know. Also both pieces are reinforced, more than your old ones. Fireproof and a carbon-fiber mesh layer.” He chuckled. “Since the padding is as reinforced as the rest of it, it should even provide you a bit more protection up-top if someone uses your crest for a bullseye.”
I was grinning and nodding. This was it. Cute without being overtly sexual, and showing a side of me I really, really wanted people to see. Someone who’d seen a fight or two. Someone who had to be taken a little more seriously.
Out of the blue, a thought occurred to me. “Can you make an armor design to go with it? Something like Ajax’s?”
* * *
I left wearing my new costume, with Andrew’s promise to do up a few spares for me. I wasn’t a fashionista like Julie, but I wasn’t immune to the confidence boost of shopping therapy and a New Look.
“So, what do you think, Shell?” She’d gone silent after we’d left the fire, and her restraint during my session with Andrew was totally un-Shell-like. A quiet Shell was a dam about to burst at any minute, and when she appeared beside me I braced myself for a flood of commentary. I looked forward to it.
She floated there, arms folded tight, looking serious. Scared, even. My heart sank. “What is it?”
“Who are you?”
“What?”
“Who are you, and what have you done with Hope?”
Chapter Six
“The National Public Safety Act would force all breakthroughs to reveal themselves to the government, whether or not they ever intended to use their powers publicly. It would force them to continually ensure that local law-enforcement knew about them. It would force them to prove that they weren’t dangerous. It’s gun-registration with powers as guns, so every breakthrough will be on a government list when it decides to ‘contain’ them!”
Hard Talk Radio Show caller.
* * *
“I’m, me. Shell?” She’d have made more sense reciting a limerick. “What’s going on? How could I be anyone else?”
Then there were two Shells. Four Shells. Eight Shells as she kept on multiplying until, turning in the air, I floated in the middle of a sphere of virtual Shells. None of them looked happy.
“Oh, let me count the ways,” they said in freaky chorus. “I’m me but I’m not, and that’s just one. Want to guess another?”
“I’m me. Stop that!”
“No, you’re not. Not since last week. Who are you?” The Shell-sphere kept getting denser, the chorus deeper.
“Stop! Shell! Stop.” I fought down rising panic. If something was wrong with Shell, what could I do? There weren’t any quantum-neural computer engineers in this year. “Nothing’s changed! What are you talking about?”
Then she was singular and right in front of me. “You don’t know. Your respiration, heartrate, pulse, vascular dilation—you don’t know, you’re not hiding anything.”
“My what? You can measure all those things?”
Her arms stayed folded, but the hard line of her mouth softened. “Your brain knows all those things, it’s sensory input, so I know through our link. Sorry, I had to check.”
Still not making sense. “Check that I’m me? When did that become a question?”
“It’s not a question.” Now she just looked miserable. “I just didn’t know if you knew.”
“That I’m not me?”
She shook her head. “You’re not.”
Okay. At least she was calm. If this was just some mistake on Shell’s part, not a quantum-ghost delusion, then I could work with it. We could break it down together. “Why? I mean, how? How do you know I’m not me?”
She took a breath. “It’s a lot of things together. A week ago, your sleep cycle changed. Completely. Like flipping a switch.”
“That? That’s got to be Chakra. She did something.”
“Nope.” She shook her head again. “You know better than that—you can feel when Chakra manipulates your chakric aura. She couldn’t have done anything behind your back.”
I blinked. I did know that. Why hadn’t I thought of that? “Okay, what else?”
“You were borderline clinically depressed before that. You aren’t all giggles and sunshine now, but a week ago I was wondering if the doc was going to have to put you on meds.”
People get better. I didn’t say it; Shell knew that, so if she wasn’t being delusional she had to be talking about something else. “And?”
“Your speech changed.”
“What?”
“You called me Shell as a nickname, before. Now it’s my name, the only one you ever use. There’s other markers—I can map every one of them. And there’s your skills.”
“My skills.”
She rolled her eyes. “Hope, your ‘fight,’ yesterday? Sure, I spotted the power-type, but you’ve never met a gravikinetic before. They’re not exactly common. You haven’t even read any reports about what the stronger ones can potentially do to real estate just by being themselves. I checked. But you knew. You knew what it meant before I or Blackstone had a chance to t
ell you.”
“But I—”
“And your whole response last night was way off. You were proactive from the beginning—requesting Chakra’s backup just in case? And asking to call the shot yourself the second you knew how dangerous the situation was? You didn’t hesitate for a second.”
My mouth opened, but where were the words? “Shell . . . Shell, that’s just experience. A lot’s happened. I’ve grown.”
“Not that much, not this fast, not last week. And this morning? Yesterday was your first crime-scene exercise, but today? When you realized we were looking at another one, you detected. Like someone who’s been trained, knows what to look for, what it means, and what to do next.”
She ran fingers through her red mop. “You know, I even did a motion analysis, after what I saw at the warehouse? All your training sessions with Ajax were recorded, so I mapped how you move. Now your style’s got new elements in your workout. Like you’ve been training with a new teacher. Which you haven’t yet. And you’re faster. Your response time is better. Not so anyone else would notice but, hello? Computer brain, here? I know your moves. Down to a zeroth of a meter, of a second.”
All I could think of was the utterly cliché “So, what are you saying?”
“That you can’t be you. Which, I’m sure you can see, is freaking me out.”
“But I can’t not be me, Shell. We’re connected. The quantum-neural link in my brain, wouldn’t you have noticed if someone had, I don’t know, swapped me out?”
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