“But what am I supposed to do?” Gretchen cinched the belt around her waist. She’d rolled up the cuffs on her legs and wrists once again. Only tall, strapping men must have worn the stupid things.
Bobby shrugged. “Put out fires. Save lives. Be a hero.” He pointed at the stairwell. “Now get out of here before we’re all busted.”
Hand in hand, Gretchen and Shane ran for the stairs. Only dim red emergency lighting lit each floor’s door, and they had to descend more by feel than by sight. When they had come down five floors, both of them were dripping with sweat and Gretchen felt like her legs had turned to jelly.
The lobby was deserted and very dark. A single emergency light shone like a baleful, crimson eye over the elevators. Gretchen led Shane out from the stairs toward that light.
“Shit,” he muttered.
“What’s the matter?”
“I just don’t like this. The dark.”
“It was dark in the sewer,” Gretchen said.
“Yeah, but there you’re only ten feet below the surface. Up here, it’s like being stranded. Hundreds of feet up and nowhere to go.”
Gretchen play-punched him in the arm. “You big scaredy cat. Don’t worry, I’ll protect you from any boogeymen.” She stood on tiptoes and kissed him.
With a rumbling rattle, the elevator passed their floor. Looking upward, she wondered if the Feds would sniff her out. She squeezed Shane’s hand and thumbed the call button.
They shrank back into the shadows and waited. In a few minutes, the car arrived with a ringing bell and the doors slid open. No Feds jumped out with guns at the ready. The car was empty.
“Let’s go,” she said, and pulled Shane after her.
They rode down for what felt like an eternity. She hoped nobody was waiting for them at the bottom of the building. When the doors slid apart, she saw only the darkened lobby and a few security guards ushering people out.
Nobody paid them any attention in the red-tinged darkness of emergency lighting. They headed out onto the plaza. Traffic jammed up all around them as people fought to get home with no traffic signals. The noise of engines and horns was deafening.
“Where should we go?” Gretchen had to lean close to Shane to hear his reply.
“Pick a direction,” he said.
She pointed.
“North it is.”
They advanced up the road, searching for opportunities for her to use her ability. There wasn’t much looting in this part of Manhattan because there weren’t many retailers. After a few minutes, they happened upon a solitary car fire.
“Okay, here goes nothing.” Gretchen pushed up her sleeves and raised her arms.
The power leaped out, eager and capricious. She let it start in the middle of the car and grow outward as a bubble until it enveloped the whole vehicle. The flames snuffed out in only a couple seconds and Gretchen’s bubble filled with smoke. Shaking under the strain of concentration, she shrank the bubble down, letting in the air a little at a time. Finally she relaxed and slumped against Shane.
The fire stayed out.
“Wow,” he said. “That was crazy.”
“It’s harder than I thought,” gasped Gretchen. “It’s so much easier to let the bubble burst.” She took a deep, shuddering breath.
“Are you all right?” Shane looked down into her eyes, concern washing over the contours of his face.
“Yeah, I think so,” she said. “Let’s go find another one.”
As they progressed further north through Manhattan, Gretchen learned a few tricks through trial and error. For smaller fires, she created a regular vacuum bubble beside them, which imploded. The resulting blast of air displacement blew out the flames like someone puffing out a candle. Larger fires required more effort and sometimes took several bubbles to take out.
After her third car fire, Gretchen was exhausted and slumped against Shane. “It’s been a long day,” she said through a yawn. “Can we rest?”
“Of course we can,” he said. “You’re the hero here. I’m just along for the ride.” They sat on a bus stop bench.
She smiled. “You’re my sidekick.”
He returned the smile. “Maybe I should have short pants on instead.”
A prowling police cruiser slowed and the spotlight shone on them, highlighting their Just Cause coveralls in sharp relief. “Everything okay, folks?”
Shane raised a hand. “We’re fine. Just catching a breather,” he replied.
The officer in the car didn’t reply. Perhaps he was looking at their matching coveralls, or listening to his radio. Gretchen hoped he wasn’t calling for backup or something.
“Okay, have a good night. And be careful. There are some dangerous people out on the streets tonight.”
“Thanks, officer,” said Shane.
The cruiser pulled away from the curb to resume its slow prowl.
“I think we better move on,” Gretchen said. “That was too close for comfort.”
“Are you sure you’re up for it?”
She nodded. “Someone’s bound to need help more than I need sleep.”
Chapter Seventeen
July 14, 1977, 1:00 AM
Faith and Irlene returned from checking Sundancer into the hospital to find Tommy engaged in a full-on shouting match with a cop. Firefighters battled the burning building, hampered by the presence of accelerants from the walking tank. Irlene’s brother sat sullenly in the back seat of a police car, watching the argument concerning his disposition. Oblivious to everyone and everything else, Javier knelt in the street beside the Steel Soldier and tried to coax life back into the mangled android.
“What’s going on?” Faith pushed in between Tommy and the officer.
“This yokel is trying to claim custody of the kid,” said Tommy.
“Yokel?” shouted the cop. “This kid committed arson and murder! Our turf, so he’s our perp.”
“We caught him,” said Tommy. “He was driving a machine that caused untold property damage and took parahuman powers to bring down. He sent one of our teammates to the hospital and another might as well be dead. Our collar.”
“Look,” said Faith. “As ranking member of Just Cause, it’s my call. We’ve already got the Feds here in town looking for one parahuman criminal. You want me to tell them the New York Police Department isn’t going to give up another one into our custody?”
“But—” The officer’s bluster began to crack with Faith facing him down.
“And I’m sure you don’t have anything more important to do tonight than hang around here hassling us about one juvenile.”
“Yes, but—”
“So if you’ll remand him to our custody, we won’t have to make a report to your chief about your unwillingness to cooperate.”
The cop sighed. “All right, you can have him. Less paperwork for us at any rate.”
“Thanks so much,” said Faith with a sweet smile. She turned to Irlene. “Can you shrink down both him and the Soldier so we can bring them both back to headquarters?”
The girl nodded. “I need to go tell Momma what happened.”
Faith shook her head. “Not yet. I’m sorry, but this is too important for you to run home when we need your shrinking ability. I promise, as soon as we’ve got Harlan and the Soldier squared away, we’ll cut you loose.”
More tears tracked down Irlene’s face but she nodded.
The heroes crossed town to reconvene at headquarters. Irlene had shrunk down the Soldier and her brother to make it easier to transport them. Once they arrived and she restored them to their original size, Bobby cleared her to notify her mother of Harlan’s arrest by Just Cause. Like a magenta hummingbird, she flitted out of the building toward the war zone that was Harlem.
Faith’s heartbeat rose when she saw Agents Simmons and Stull were back in headquarters again, sipping coffee and discussing their investigation while poring over a large map of the city. She pulled Bobby aside to speak with him.
“Where are they?” She mad
e a point not to mention Gretchen or Shane’s names, just to be safe.
“They’re out,” said Bobby. A dark blush colored his cheeks.
“Out?” repeated Faith. “Out where?”
“Out. Fighting fires,” he said. “I inducted them onto the team.”
Faith’s mouth dropped open. “You what?”
Bobby shrugged. “She wanted to help, and she can put out fires with her power. I wasn’t going to let her go, but those two assholes came back and I didn’t want them to know we’re holding out on them.”
“So you let two federal fugitives just walk away?” Faith couldn’t believe her own ears. This wasn’t the responsible Bobby she knew. “I mean, I don’t want to turn her over to them either, but this could mean your job. It could get you sent to prison yourself.”
Bobby folded his arms. Faith could tell he felt conflicted. “These aren’t normal circumstances,” he said at last. “City-wide power failure, riots, goddamn children torching tenements with giant robots.” His face grew hard. “I need to use whatever resources I have available in this crisis, and if that means I deputize a fugitive, so be it.”
Faith threw her arms around him and kissed him. She knew how worried he’d been about her in the battle with Harlan’s tank; being unable to participate in parahuman combat meant Bobby spent a lot of time worrying about her and the others.
“Any word from Rick or John?” she asked.
“John’s working through the subways, helping stranded riders to get out of the tunnels. Rick’s somewhere here in Manhattan. Last he checked in, he was tying a looter to a street light.”
Faith burst out laughing.
“Tell me about Gloria and the Soldier.”
“Gloria’s got some second- and third-degree burns on her face and chest from her own power reflecting back at her. She was in shock but the hospital got her stabilized. We’ll know more by morning.”
“It’s already morning,” said Bobby.
“Christ, don’t I know it.” Faith yawned. “As far as the Soldier goes, Javier thinks he’s dead. The kid says he can fix him.”
“Do you think he can?”
Faith shuddered. “You should have seen that thing he built. It’s all burned up now, but besides the Soldier it was the most advanced thing I’ve ever seen. And it looked like he built it out of spare parts and junk,” she added. “If anyone can fix the Soldier, I’d put my money on that kid. He must be some kind of engineering savant.”
Bobby shot her a sharp look. “Do you think he’s a parahuman?”
“Like superhuman engineering skill?”
“More like superhuman intelligence.”
“That would make him really dangerous,” said Faith. “I hope it’s not true.”
“H-hello?” A hoarse, nervous voice came over the radio. “P-Pony Girl? Anyone?”
“Who is that?” asked Bobby.
“Sounds like Irlene.” Faith picked up her radio. “Pony Girl here. Go ahead.”
“It’s my momma,” said the girl. “She been killed dead.”
#
The Steel Soldier was like nothing Harlan had ever seen, or even imagined before. The android was complex all the way down to a microscopic level, filled with components for purposes Harlan couldn’t begin to comprehend.
The mechanical lab in which the Soldier’s remains sat was a marvel of engineering. As Javelin watched him like a hawk, Harlan familiarized himself with some of the high-tech tools and devices. His brain soaked up data like a sponge, taking mental snapshots of everything he saw, redrawing schematics, and gaining deeper understanding.
He saw with pride how much damage his bolt gun had done to the Soldier’s torso. He was a force to be reckoned with, he thought. Wearing a device like a bicycle helmet with multiple magnification lenses and articulated lights, he worked to disconnect the Soldier’s weapons systems before tackling the damaged torso section.
A hand encased in bronze armor closed around his arm. Harlan looked to see Javelin glaring at him. “Hey, what the fuck are you doing?”
“Disconnecting the weapons,” explained Harlan as if to a child. “Then the boot jets. You want one of them to accidentally fire while I’m working?”
“Ain’t never happened before.”
“Has your android ever been this damaged before?”
Javelin didn’t have a response for that.
Harlan adjusted his lights and lenses and bent over the Soldier’s arm. As he disconnected the cannon, he began to understand the basic construction method. The Soldier hadn’t been built like a machine, but like an organic being. It had a steel skeleton, hydraulic muscles, a circulatory system to deliver power where it was needed, and a nervous system to transmit data and instructions to and from the central brain.
“Amazing,” he whispered. He could build a new Destroyer suit with this kind of technology. It could take years, but in the end, he’d have a suit that was like a second skin.
“That the kid?” asked a rough voice.
“Yeah that’s the little prick,” said Javelin. “Burned down half of Harlem.”
Harlan looked up to see Javier speaking with a white guy in a dark gray suit who stank of coffee and cigarettes.
“Christ,” said the man as if commenting on the weather. “How old are you?”
Harlan looked back at the Soldier. “Thirteen. What do you want? I’m busy.”
“Special Agent Simmons, FBI.” The agent extended a hand to Harlan, who looked at it with disinterest. “I understand your sister is part of Just Cause.”
“So?”
Agent Simmons cleared his throat. “You’re in a lot of trouble, kid, make no mistake about it. On the other hand, the government might be able to intervene on your behalf. If, say, you were to cooperate with us.”
“Hold on,” said Javelin. “You’re not thinking about cutting a deal with this little punk, are you?”
“Stay out of this, hero. This isn’t your concern.”
“The fuck it isn’t,” said Javelin. “He could have killed Sundancer. He might have killed the Steel Soldier. How many civilians died under his guns tonight? How many people has he left homeless?” Javelin grabbed hold of Harlan’s shoulder and spun him around to hiss in his face. “What’s your death toll, cabron?”
Harlan spat in the Puerto Rican man’s face.
Javelin raised his gauntlet, ready to blast the smirk off Harlan’s face.
The sound of a hammer cocking was loud in the tense silence. “Back away from the boy.” Agent Simmons had his nine millimeter clutched in both hands and aimed at Javelin’s head. “Give me a reason.”
“I didn’t mean nothing by it,” said Javelin with a forced laugh. He shoved Harlan as he stalked away. “Get back to work fixing my teammate.”
Harlan returned to the Soldier and began isolating circuits and rerouting conduits as he surveyed the damage. He had an idea for a component he could install. It wouldn’t be complex or difficult to build from the tools at hand.
It would ensure that in the future, Harlan would never have trouble with the Soldier again.
“You’re out of control, Javelin. This will be in my report.”
“Ah, fuck it. I’m just the team babysitter,” said Javelin. “First that girl, and now this little shit.”
Agent Simmons took a step toward him. “What girl?”
Javelin shrugged, but Harlan noticed a vein throbbing in his temple. He’d said something he wasn’t supposed to and the agent had seen it as well. “Just some kid,” mumbled the hero.
“Was it Gretchen Gumm? Did you find her and not report to us?” Agent Simmons’ face turned thunderous.
“Hey, I know a Gretchen,” said Harlan. “I got her passes to get in here from my sister.”
Simmons’ eyes widened. He yanked a piece of paper from within his coat and shoved it in Harlan’s face. “Is this her?”
Harlan nodded. “She’s nice. Why are you looking for her?”
Simmons grinned in triumph at Jave
lin, who wouldn’t meet his gaze. “She’s wanted for murder.”
Harlan’s heart leaped and swelled. He and Gretchen had far more in common than he’d ever realized.
Truly, they belonged together.
“Maybe I can help you find her,” said Harlan. “She knows me.”
“Maybe so,” said Simmons. He turned to point at Javelin. “You guys, though, are in a shitload of trouble.”
Javelin sighed. “So what else is new?”
Pony Girl burst into the lab. “I need to speak to Harlan.”
Agent Simmons folded his arms and set his jaw. “So talk.”
“Privately,” she said. Harlan could tell she was upset about something. He suspected perhaps they’d found Momma at last. He wasn’t worried; he had his story straight.
“So you can let this one slip through your fingers too? I don’t think so. As soon as I can get a court order, this kid is going to be in my custody.” He shook his head. “I can’t trust Just Cause with a prisoner anymore. Not that I ever did.”
Pony Girl rounded on Javelin, furious. “What did you tell him, you addled son of a bitch?”
Javelin tried to stammer an excuse but Pony Girl shook her head. “No, I don’t have time for your bullshit now.” She turned to Harlan. “Harlan, I’m sorry. There’s been an accident. Your mother is dead and your younger sister is missing.”
As he made his lip quiver and tears spill forth, Harlan thought how proud Gretchen would be if she knew.
#
Sporadic fires and headlights in the shadows below looked like the city dwellers were trying to recreate the majesty of the skies above. It was beautiful and terrible at the same time.
Dark New York spread out beneath Tommy as he cruised back toward Queens, where Miranda lived. He felt guilty that he hadn’t been able to check on her since the catastrophe started and he hoped that she was all right.
“Tornado, come in.” The crackle of Bobby’s voice on his radio disturbed his reverie. He halted his flight to float a couple hundred feet in the air. His cape fluttered gently in a warm breeze.
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