by Matt Carter
When it finishes installing, I tap DistressFinder and let it run in the background, searching and cross-referencing all emergency calls, infrastructure damage, and the hashtags of mobile uploads in the city to pinpoint likely locations of supervillain activity and disasters.
Anything that might be a job for a hero.
I don’t know why I bother. Maybe because it feels normal, feels like before all this. It was the first app I opened when I turned on my phone every morning as Glitter Girl.
“I’m glad you brought up family,” says the reporter. “Your ‘Family Restoration’ plan has been one of the more controversial points of your senate campaign. Would you—”
“Oh, there’ve been a lot of false reports going around about all this huge opposition, but they’re really just a few bitter, lonely, angry old ladies making a fuss. Tremendous exaggeration.”
“You believe the media has exaggerated the response to your promise to eliminate legal protections for women in the workforce?”
“Actually, I never said that,” says Card. “There’s a lot of slanted news out there about me. You should do your homework more carefully.”
The reporter checks his notes. “Here’s the quote we received: ‘The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is one of the most serious and sinister modern threats to both the economy and the family unit.’ Is that incorrect?”
It’s correct. I was standing in the wings behind him waiting to dive in front of snipers when he said that.
“What I said or didn’t say isn’t important,” he continues. “The point is, I’m going to bring back family and the American dream, no matter how my enemies try to tear it down. Children need a mother. Employers need reliable, focused employees. But I respect the role of women in the workforce. I do. Nobody does more than me. There are certain women, young ladies without the distractions they’ll have later in life, who can be more valuable than any man in certain positions. Take my relationship with Solar Flare, for example.”
Oh god.
I scroll down the alerts on DistressFinder, past the bank and jewelry store robberies I know the other Guardians will reach before I could, trying not to hear Card’s voice.
“She’s a girl, and a super no less, a big role model to girls everywhere, and she’s become like a member of the family looking out for us the way she has. People don’t think I care about the ladies, but I love them. I love them like crazy.”
Far toward the bottom of the DistressFinder listings, there’s a cluster of reports of a structure fire. Given the rain, it’s almost certainly superhuman arson.
The location is deep in WPC, far outside the core response radius for either the Juniors or the PCG.
Another text comes in from Pinnacle, asking me to clarify my need for a sick day, given that my application listed no known weaknesses.
I don’t answer.
I don’t know who Solar Flare is or what she’s supposed to do next, or if she even still exists, but I know who Kimberly Kline is, and she’s going to go put out a fire.
It’s a shantytown that’s blazing in spite of the downpour; trailers, tents, shacks, and an old abandoned grocery store all dripping with wet ash even as they burn.
There isn’t a superhero or a police car in sight, but a half-dozen figures glowing with blue flame are circling the wreckage, adding to the fire wherever it begins to go out.
Some of the inhabitants are still around, several of them throwing buckets of rainwater at the figures and structures, others standing off to the side, huddling under whatever blankets, tarps, or clothes they could grab, watching in an attitude of inevitable gloom.
Okay, Glitter Girl, g—
No, I mean Kimberly, go!
“Hey, Matchsticks!” I shout to the glowing blue arsonists, floating over them and the epicenter of the destruction. “This little gang of yours got a name?”
Not that it matters, but old habits.
The figures all answer in perfect unison without deviating from their work.
“We are Effigy.”
Huh. Pretty good name.
“Are you going to move away from the homes, Effigy? Or am I going to move you?”
The Effigies don’t answer, which in this case is answer enough.
Swooping down in a long, fast arc, I grab two of them, one under each arm, and dangle them over the fruits of their efforts, waiting to see if that’ll be enough to make the others back off.
Didn’t think so.
The Effigies squirm without concern for their altitude, burning through my secondhand sweatshirt, and it takes me a moment to realize they’re not only squirming and burning. They’re multiplying.
When I’m holding three of them under each arm instead of one, one of them slips and falls into the charred tent below, splitting on impact into three more.
New strategy: burst of speed.
Two at a time, I start grabbing copies and flying them out to the ocean, dropping them about a half mile offshore, close enough that they won’t drown even if I leave them there, far enough that they won’t make it back to land before I can take care of the fire and figure out what to do with them.
It seems for a while that I’m making progress, relocating them faster than they can multiply, but the copies left in the shantytown are getting angrier, meaner, turning their flames on the people wielding buckets as well as their homes.
“Heroes have no business here!” all of Effigy shouts together, one of the copies grabbing me with a flaming hand that can’t hurt me but sets the cuff of my jeans on fire.
A young family standing guard over their dilapidated lean-to abandons their defense, scooping up their children and making a break away from the encampment.
I relocate the copies laying into their possessions next.
The deeper I go into the wreckage, grabbing copies along the way, the worse the news gets. People have died here already, skeletons charred beyond recognition holding each other or raising their arms in defense against the flaming Effigies that set their homes on fire.
I might be sick again, but not ’til this is under control.
Why is no one else here?
No. No one answer that.
No matter how many copies I move, this isn’t working. The fires are too hot. Nothing’s going to be left on this spot by morning but ash.
I leave the Effigies alone and go for the residents instead, flying anyone who’ll take my hand out to the edge of the destruction and blasting aside the copies trying to block off their escape routes on the ground.
An elderly man with the beak of a hummingbird emerges shakily from one of the trailers, dragging an oxygen tank and a mask jury-rigged to fit him with trash bags and duct tape. He raises his cane defensively when I fly for him, and I try to explain that his tank’s in danger of accelerating the fire, but eventually I have to scoop up both him and it and drop them off before we get a live demonstration.
I’m confused by why the Effigies hardly seem to be trying to stop me anymore, until I realize they’re converging on one trailer in particular, cornered up against the grocery store, abandoning the rest to their evacuation.
“If this is what Milgram calls a recruitment package, you can tell him fuck off!” shouts a man in front of the trailer in question.
There’s a hole burnt clean through the side of it, and there are people inside, hissing urgently to each other. Through the hole I see a little girl frantically gathering things into a bag.
A man swings a baseball bat that connects with an Effigy’s head, forcing it back.
There’s soot on his clothes and sparks in his long, wet hair, and oh sugar cookies, it’s Eddie.
It’s the guy whose name I didn’t want next to mine in the tabloids, shielding a family from supervillains with nothing but a baseball bat, while Mayor Card babbles to a national news audience about how he’s going to quarantine this whole neighborhood and what a great endorsement my friendship has been.
I thought coming here would make me feel bett
er about myself.
I was wrong.
Eddie looks up, and in the several, squinting seconds it takes for the recognition to reach his face, I’d like nothing better than to hide, but the Effigy in front of him is glowing brighter around the hands, and there’s no time for my embarrassment.
I pluck the copy off the ground before it can reach its burning hands to Eddie’s face, tossing it only a few yards away so I can grab the next one and do the same.
All at once, the Effigies part as a non-burning copy runs through their midst toward Eddie. He swings his bat at it, but it dodges easily, grabbing him in a chokehold. They exchange some words and I want to help him, but there are too many of them between us, and they’re on me like a wave.
Spreading his legs out for balance, he manages to flip the unburning copy over his shoulder, taking a swing at it with his bat, but before he can make contact it rolls out of the way and disappears back into the horde.
“I don’t want to hurt you!” I shout at the Effigies, doing my best to clear them away from between us with nonlethal blasts. “Please!”
“The real one’s long gone!” shouts Eddie. “Nothing you do to these fuckers’ll hurt anyone!”
I hope he’s right.
No light, I tell my fingers, rerouting as much as I can of my usual, reflexive type of energy direction. No light, no heat, just force.
The shockwave I send forward cuts the Effigies closest to us in half at the waist, and there’s a brief whiff of excrement and burning meat before they extinguish, then dissipate into nothing.
Those farther back are knocked down with a variety of injuries, some dissolving like the dismembered ones, others, the farthest away, beginning to multiply to replace them.
This is the best chance we’re going to get. I turn to look at what’s left of the trailer. Most of the base still looks sturdy enough.
“Everyone get down!” I shout through the hole in the wall.
Eddie considers for a moment, looking at the regrouping Effigies, then drops, and I hear three bodies inside the trailer do the same.
I take aim at the blaze eating through the trailer’s roof.
No light, no heat, just force.
My next, smaller shockwave extinguishes the fire, mostly by knocking off the top third of the trailer, preserving as much as I can of the inside.
The girl crawls to the hole to look out, her eyes wide under her hood. Her frightened face is secreting some kind of mucous, and she clutches an armful of comics to her chest like her dearest friend. I recognize the Adventures of Glitter Girl logo, big and bright at the top of the covers.
When she sees me looking, she vanishes into thin air.
No, not vanishes, turns invisible. I can see the smoke and rain avoiding the space her body still occupies.
“Climb aboard and hold onto something,” I tell Eddie. After a brief hesitation he steps through the hole, beckoning the invisible girl away from the edge.
A couple, presumably her parents, peer over the top of the wall I broke. The woman’s holding a baby, and the man … I hope for a moment that I’m imagining things. Maybe it’s just a similar mutation and the firelight playing tricks on me, but no, the sick feeling in my stomach is sure of it. I’ve seen the girl’s father before.
He helped murder Quentin.
There are about a million things I’d like to say to him, but the Effigies are closing in. I bend my knees and brace my fingers, lifting the bottom of the trailer off the asphalt, holding it level over my head. I take off, flying Eddie, Quentin’s murderer, and his family along inside.
When exactly did doing the right thing get so complicated?
CHAPTER 15: THE DETECTIVE
I guide the hero to the Crescent and hold on for dear life. The trailer half she carries us all on wasn’t meant for this kind of travel, let alone at high speed, through pouring rain, late at night. I don’t have it as bad as Mendoza and his wife, trying to help two kids hold on as well, but I’m not having fun either.
Credit to her, though, she gets us there quick and we’re all alive.
Better than things would’ve been if we’d stayed at Camp 31.
I can’t say for sure how many other residents got out alive. I can hope, but I can’t believe it was very many. We got out by what has got to be some of the greatest dumb luck in history.
Or I’ve got a pissed off one night stand who’s looking for a pound of flesh.
For once, I’m hoping for dumb luck.
She sets us down around the back of the Lineup. Though she didn’t respond to my texts, Tragedii is waiting for us, rain pouring around her shield bubble.
She gives the trailer half, then us, then the trailer half again all one quick look before saying, “Just what the hell happened?”
“Long story. I’m trying to fix things, and these people got caught in the middle. Can we stash them in the Well for a few days?”
I’ve said the magic words.
“Let me get the keys.”
She presses a button on her mechanical wrist, opening a small compartment farther up her arm that reveals a small key card, which she takes. Her mechanical eye swivels on its own and locks onto the hero, glowing bright red.
“What about her?” Tragedii asks.
That’s not a bad question.
Solar Flare, Kimberly Kline, whatever she wants to be called, stands in the rain with us, and yet not with us. She knows she’s somewhere she’s not welcome. This is new for her, I think, and I don’t think she likes it very much. I could take a lot of pleasure in just kicking her to the curb, here and now, like any other pro-hero would do to us under the circumstances.
But she did save us when she didn’t have to, and on her own time, if her lack of uniform means anything. The other Guardians, they wouldn’t go to WPC unless there were headlines in it, and there aren’t headlines in saving a bunch of homeless and gene-jobs from a shantytown fire. There’s an actual chance, however much I don’t want to believe it, that she may actually believe in all that heroing shit.
“She’s with us, I guess,” I say.
“Okay. You got any designs on that trailer?” Tragedii asks.
“No.”
“Excellent. I’ve been meaning to give my disintegrator ray a good workout,” Tragedii says, waving us over to a stairway leading to the basement behind the bar. Mendoza, his family, and Kline all head down.
Tragedii waves her key over a brick near the base of the basement’s dingy-looking door and it disappears, replaced by a swirling green portal.
With the others looking at it warily, I step through, and into the Well.
The Well used to be Tragedii’s time travel ship. According to her, it’s no bigger on the outside than a small van, but on the inside it’s about the size of a pretty decent condo, with living quarters, medical facilities, and entertainment enough for close to a dozen people. I’ve never seen the outside of it, because Tragedii refuses to tell anyone where, or when, it currently is, making it one of the safest places in the world as far as I know.
With her future no longer existing, Tragedii uses the Well mostly as a place to rest her feet between shifts, but occasionally for more altruistic purposes. She’s opened it up to runaways dodging the system, junkies looking to detox, and women fleeing from abusive husbands, boyfriends, and stalkers on more than one occasion. I don’t think she’s ever had a group this big in it before, but I’m glad she’s cool letting us hole up here for now.
Mendoza and his family take two of the bedrooms, and after a few rounds of thanks that I don’t feel I’ve fully earned, they disappear for the night with an escort from Kline.
I park myself in front of the big screen in the ship’s media room, surfing around the news and finding nothing about Milgram’s attack on Camp 31. I’m not surprised when it’s all gossip about which pro-heroes are sleeping with which pro-heroes (and rumors that working with the Cards has made the new Solar Flare crack), so I finally settle on some nature documentary, where a British
guy narrates lions picking off weak wildebeest from a herd.
I’m watching without watching, because what I’m really doing is waiting for her. Waiting for a conversation I don’t want to but very much need to have, because, like it or not, there’s a chance I can trust this girl, and a chance that I’m going to need more of her help.
But the conundrum is whether to tell her everything or almost everything. Do I leave out Bystander in the naïve hope that I can still save her from the mess she’s gotten into with Milgram, giving her what I want her to know as opposed to what she probably should know?
Bystander came for me, during the attack. Tried to save me from the Effigies while disguised as one of them. She tried to choke me out and drag me off (very romantic, I know), and for her trouble I flung her down and tried to hit her with Harriet.
I haven’t seen her look that hurt since after the Ricardo incident. Even with her wearing a stranger’s face, my heart broke for doing that to her.
I wish it hadn’t. I wish it were easier to think of her as just another Milgram thug if that’s what she really wants to be.
After what seems like hours of waiting, Kline’s back in the room.
“Have you ever tried the showers in here? I’ve never had water this hot with that much pressure before,” she sighs, wrapping her hair in a towel. She’s wearing a bath robe that was clearly made for Tragedii’s size, baggy on even her impressive frame and dragging on the ground, even though I’m pretty sure she’s hovering by a few inches.
“Did it smell a little funny?” I ask, amused.
“Like sulfur? A little bit.”
“Then you got the shower plugged into primordial Earth. Tragedii doesn’t like paying for utilities or anything like that so she’s wired the Well to all kinds of time travel shortcuts. Try not to shower for too long next time or you might prevent life from existing. Did you toss your clothes in that thing that looked like a dryer?”
“Yes. Why? It’s not a dryer?” she asks, dubious.
Suddenly, I’m very grave. “No, it isn’t. In fact, you just threw your clothes into a machine that might unravel the very nature of reality itself.”