by Peter Moore
“You have no idea,” she said. Her eyes were locked on mine. “And I nominated you to join us.”
“Is that right? Funny, I don’t remember asking to join. Wouldn’t it have been a good idea to ask me first?”
“I can tell, at heart, you’re one of us.”
“Hm. Really. Well, putting that aside for now, why would you even want me? I don’t have useful powers.”
“I have my reasons. I know what I’m doing. Look we can’t get into it here, but you kind of need to prove yourself.”
“How?”
“Well, what we’re doing is the kind of stuff that someone who wanted to hurt our little crew could use to get us in a whole lot of trouble. So we—not me, really, I trust you—the group needs some sign of commitment from you.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I mean you need to show us that you’re willing to put yourself at risk like the rest of us. We need a sign of good faith.”
“How about a sign of good faith for me? Tell me what it is you claim to know about me that I don’t know.”
“Join up with us and I will.”
I watched her. I hadn’t noticed the flecks of violet in her eyes before. If I did this, I couldn’t say how much of it was for the political agenda of this alleged group and how much was just a way to get closer to Layla.
“I’ll give it a try,” I said.
“But first—”
“Yeah, I heard. A sign of good faith. I have an idea for that.”
Passing Muster
Remembering the address wouldn’t be a problem. Neither would recognizing the building. But I was watching Blake’s every move, counting every step, scanning the entrance hallway for cameras or detectors.
I didn’t see anything remotely suspicious. From the outside and inside, the place looked like any other slightly run-down, small residential building in the city.
Except I didn’t hear a single sound from any of the apartments above us: not music, not voices, not footsteps. Not a peep.
“Why is it so quiet?” I asked.
“No tenants. The Justice Force owns this building. It’s just a front. Or, I guess, a top.”
“What?”
“You’ll see.”
At the back of the ground-floor hallway, there was an elevator. Blake pushed the button, and when the doors opened, I saw that it was in such bad condition I wondered if the elevator was even safe to use.
“Go on,” he said.
I went in, my stomach a little twitchy. The doors closed heavily, and Blake pushed the button marked B. The elevator lurched and descended.
“You guys seriously have a lab in the basement of a crummy apartment building?”
Blake gave me what he must have believed was a sly smile.
The elevator stopped and the door opened, but Blake didn’t step out. Instead, he turned to the emergency-stop button, twisted it, and flipped it up. I could see the glint of glass. He leaned forward so his eye was a few inches away. Obviously, a retinal scanner.
And the back wall of the elevator slid away. Behind it was a cubicle about the same size as the elevator, but the walls were made of a bright, shiny metal. Blake led and I followed. A steel door closed and he pushed the single button, holding his thumb on it longer than I would think was necessary. Most likely, a thumbprint key.
It became clear that we were in another elevator once it started descending fast enough to make my stomach lurch.
“Pretty cool, huh?” Blake said.
“Wow,” I said. “I thought we were already in the basement. How far down does this go?”
“Pretty far. We had to get G-Force to dig out the shaft. It goes way down into the bedrock.”
The elevator slowed, flattening my stomach up against my diaphragm in a less-than-pleasant way. When we came to a stop, the door opened with a fast whoosh.
We stepped out into an enormous room. Video monitors covered every bit of the wall in front of us. Sitting at a huge desk was a middle-aged guy who looked vaguely familiar.
“Hey, Rotes. How’s it going?” Blake said to the guy.
“It’s going. Going and going and going.”
I glanced at the monitors. They were all showing different things: aerial views of streets, low-level shots of nuclear reactors, people walking on streets in cities and small towns, shots of airport runways, international monuments, and countless highways and bridges. Also, it looked like there were hookups to surveillance cameras in just about every type of business, hospital, and outdoor environment.
“Keeping an eye on things?” Blake said, and laughed.
The older guy said, “Yeah, I haven’t heard that one yet. Today.”
“Ha. So, Rotor, this here’s my kid brother, Brad. Brad, Rotor.”
The guy half turned in his swivel chair and looked up at me with tired and red basset hound eyes.
“So, like I said when I called,” Blake started, “I was hoping you might talk to my brother. See, Brad, Rotor doesn’t have any significant powers, really. The best thing he can do is watch a bunch of things at once and process information faster than most computers. But just because he didn’t have great abilities, that didn’t stop him. Right, Rotor?”
“Right,” he said, entirely without enthusiasm.
“Nope, old Rotor here still got a job with the Justice Force as one of our status surveillance experts. We’re tied into every surveillance system in the country, including personal home systems. You see how the images keep changing? The computer chooses what to show based on…Rotor-oo, what it’s called?”
“An actuarial algorithm.”
“That’s right. And all Rotor here has to do is watch them and report anything that looks suspicious. It’s not a bad gig, is it, Rotor? Low risk of danger. Don’t have to worry about staying fit. And you get to travel. We have twelve different surveillance labs all over the country, and more in our international bases. So Rotor gets to rotate with a bunch of other guys. Nice benefit of the job, having the opportunity to see all those places, right, Rotor?”
“I see them on TV screens, sitting by myself in a subterranean room for weeks at a time. It’s not exactly sightseeing.”
“Ha! Good one, Rotes. Anyway, I thought that since you don’t really have powers—I mean, not the big ones—you might tell my little brother how there are still important things to do as support for the teams.”
“It’s just wonderful,” Rotor said with not the slightest hint of emotion in his voice.
Rotor was not much of a motormouth, so we didn’t stay long.
On that elevator ride up, I got the sense that Blake was disappointed, feeling that his mission had failed.
But it wasn’t a total loss. Not at all. My mission had turned out to be a smashing success.
“And you know where this is?” Javier asked.
“I know exactly where it is. I was there.”
We were in Javier’s car, parked in the lot of a fast-food place, taking our lunch period off school premises as usual. Javier turned to Peanut, who was in the passenger seat, then looked back to us.
“That is interesting, but what has it to do with us? How do we use it?”
Boots shrugged. “I can’t say. But it’s definitely worth knowing about.”
“That’s some pretty serious intel,” Layla said. “Not something we could ever have gotten on our own.”
She looked steadily at Javier. Finally he nodded, then turned to me. His gaze was steady, cold, and deadly serious. “So, do you have any big plans for tonight?”
Hideout
Ididn’t go into the city too often. It wasn’t that I was nervous about the higher rate of crime there, despite hero patrols augmenting the police force. For some reason, that didn’t worry me. I just didn’t m
uch like the noise, the dirt, and the ruins of historical, financial, and political buildings that had been targets over the years.
I had no idea that Layla and some of the other kids lived in the city. I told Mom I was going to a movie with Virginia and Travis.28 She dropped me off at the theater, and I walked the four blocks to the train station. In less than half an hour, I was in midtown.
It took a little while for me to find the neighborhood of the address that Layla gave me. It was in a seedy part of town: the buildings were run-down, a lot of the cars had boots on their wheels and were obviously abandoned, and the stores in the neighborhood were the kind where half the shelves were empty and the guys at the cash registers sat behind bulletproof/laserproof glass. Was this really where Layla lived?
I found the low-rise apartment building and called the dummy number from my phone. It connected, and there was a click and then I was disconnected. There was a buzzer sound and then the solid thunk of a heavy metal bar inside the door being electronically unlocked. The door opened a few inches. As I reached for the knob, I heard Boots inside, calling down the stairway, “Don’t touch the knob. Just use your foot to push it open. It’ll close by itself.”
Weird, but I did what she told me to. A single bare bulb lit the hallway. It cast just enough light for me to see what looked like decades of grime on the floor.
“Come on back,” Boots said. “Don’t touch anything.”
She didn’t have to tell me twice. I barely wanted to breathe the air in there, much less touch anything. “Oh, you’ll want to skip this second-to-last step,” she called again.
“Broken?”
“Wired to blow.”
I laughed. She didn’t. I skipped the second-to-last step.
Boots opened a door near the end of the filthy hall. I followed her inside, hoping somehow it would be less dilapidated.
No major difference on the other side of the doorway: water stains on the ceiling, buckled wood flooring, and so many gigantic cracks on the walls they looked like road maps.
Javier was at the far end of the room, hunched over a worktable. Against one wall was a row of desks, each with at least one computer on top of it—some had three. Peanut was watching something on a computer screen. It looked like a cartoon.
Layla walked across the room to me. “So. Welcome to our lair.”
“Your lair? Seriously? Well, I love what you’ve done with the place.”
Boots walked over to Javier, sat on a wheeled stool behind him, and watched him work.
“Um, what exactly is this?” I asked Layla. “Please tell me this isn’t where you live.”
“It’s where we come to hang out.”
“What, you rent it? And nobody even lives here?”
“We don’t exactly rent it. We have an arrangement with the old guy who owns the building.”
“An arrangement.”
“Well, yeah. He does his thing in other parts of the building, that thing that may not be totally legal, and we do our thing in here. Nobody asks any questions, and everyone stays happy.”
“And what is the ‘thing’ you guys do in here?”
“Lots of stuff. That’s one of the reasons I had you come here. We’ll tell you, but you have to understand that this is all seriously secret. High stakes. No joke.”
“I get you.”
Layla sat at the table. I pulled out a chair and sat, too. She called out, “Hey, can you guys come on over? We need to have that talk.”
Javier put down the tools he was using and headed toward us with Boots. On the way, Javier leaned over and murmured something to Peanut, who looked in my direction and laughed.
Everyone sat down at the table. There was a long, awkward silence. Finally, Javier spoke. “Go ahead, Miss Keating. This was your idea. So talk.”29
“Okay, then. Brad, you ever hear us—or anyone in the class—use the word vital?”
“I guess, maybe.”
“Do you know what it means?”
“Vital? Other than ‘crucially important’? That’s the way I know it.”
“For us, it stands for ‘Villains-in-Training: A-hole Legion.’”
I laughed. Layla and Boots smiled, but the guys looked serious. Layla went on. “Well, it’s kind of funny, but it’s not totally a joke. We got together because we’re like-minded about some issues. Mainly, the roles the supposed heroes play, the role our government plays—”
“The military/Industrialists’30 connection to the heroes,” Javier added.
Layla nodded. “The whole deal. Really, like what we talk about in Wittman’s class. Now, there’s talk and there’s action. The first doesn’t do any good without the second.”
“So what kind of action are you taking?” I asked.
Javier leaned forward. “Let us just say that we are working to build a relationship with someone very big.”
“And who’s that?”
Now Javier leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. “That is for us to know and for you to learn.”
“Villains-in-training, you said. Are you serious?”
“Do we look serious?” Peanut said.
Given that Peanut was wearing a tank top that revealed the notes he wrote to himself in ballpoint pen all over his body (Work triceps and More upright rows for lats, each with an arrow pointing to the designated body part), I decided not to answer that one directly. “You want to be bad guys and go up against the heroes?” I asked instead.
“Heroes,” Javier said. He didn’t spit on the floor, but he might as well have. “And ‘bad guys’? What are you, twelve years old?”31
Layla shot him a look but then turned back to me. “From stuff we’ve talked about, and the few things you’ve said in class—”
“Assuming it’s not all total bool-sheet,” Javier said, leaning on that accent hard.
Layla reamed him out with a string of curses, ending with, “So if you’re not going to cooperate, just keep your trap shut. Okay? You’re pissing me off.”
“Everybody needs to just calm down,” Boots said. “Fighting is not going to help anything.”
Javier still glared at Layla, but he didn’t say another word.
Layla ignored him and kept her attention on me. “We want you to be a part of our group.”
“I don’t really get it. I’m not sure what it is you want me to do. I mean, I totally agree with you about how there’s a mixed-up view of what the so-called heroes do, but how do you plan to go up against them? I mean, us? Seriously? Unless there’s something you haven’t told me, none of you—none of us—have any incredibly impressive powers.”
Boots put the heel of one boot against the edge of the table and tilted her chair backward, rocking it. “Oh, some of us have powers. Just not the ones most people find exciting. But there’s lots we can do to start righting all the wrongs.”
“Like what?”
Javier’s head turned to me like it was on a swivel. “Like we shall tell you when we’re ready and good. You have not even said you would commit to the group. All you are doing is questioning us, as if to say we must answer to you.”
Layla turned to Javier and looked at him. His face went a tiny bit slack; then he made eye contact with her. “Okay, fine,” he said. “I get the message. I’ll be quiet. But just…okay.”
“We have lots of plans,” Boots said. “We believe in preparation, not rushing into bad situations.”
“We’re talking espionage, sabotage…camouflage,” Peanut said. He looked around at all of us staring at him. “I don’t know. I couldn’t think of another rhyme.”
I shrugged. “It’s great that you trust me, but I don’t have…I don’t see what I could bring to the table. I really don’t have decent powers.”
Layla looked deep in my eyes. “Nev
er mind about that right now. We brought you here because we trust you. We sense a kindred spirit. Someone who believes that the heroes need to be stopped. That there are better ways to run the world. And we think you care about those things, too, and you would be willing to fight for them. Are we right?”
I looked at all of them, then at the walls, the bright light shining down on Javier’s bench, then again at their faces. I thought about Blake’s offensive comments about killing villains, especially Phaetons, as the duty of heroes.
“It sounds good, yeah,” I said. “But I just don’t think I have anything to offer.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Layla said.
And then I said four of the most important words I’ve ever spoken.
“Okay. Tell me everything.”
Vital
Do I have to take some kind of blood oath or something first?”
“This is not necessary,” Javier said, pushing his chair back. “The blood will come fast enough if you ever betray us.” He turned to Layla. “Are we finished here?”
“For now. I still have some things to talk about with Brad. If you don’t want to stick around, feel free to leave.”
Everyone except Layla and me got up and went back to where they had been before the little talk we had. “So,” I said to Layla, “I still don’t get what I have to offer.”
“That’s what I wanted to tell you. Come on.”
“What’s the deal, Layla?”
“What I’m going to tell you is pretty personal, and I just thought you might want to hear it in private.”
She grabbed my wrist and pulled me up. Layla led me past the windows and into a side room. She closed the door behind us.
The room was very small with a single mattress on the floor, a tiny night table with a lamp that was on, and two wooden straight-backed chairs. That’s it. Not exactly luxurious.
My heart was beating just a little faster and harder than usual. It was the first time I could remember being alone in a room with Layla, and, lack of romantic surroundings notwithstanding, this had a feel of, well, intimacy coming soon.