Dreadnought

by April Daniels

  “I’m starting to. Utopia hit that medical lab downtown, right?”

  “So?”

  “So she doesn’t have everything she needs. I’m betting she’s hitting other places, too.”

  “Have you checked the police blotters?” I ask as I slip my books and laptop back into my bag.

  Calamity raises her eyebrows at me. “Danny, you ever even seen a police blotter?”

  “No.”

  “They have basically zero information. A burglary was reported at 123 Hypothetical Street is about all you’ll get. We head down that road and we’ll be sifting through every reported crime in the New Port metro area for the past six months with no way of telling which ones even looked like something our girl was involved in. We don’t have that kind of time. We need something else.”

  “Okay. So what do we do?”

  “I’ve got a couple of contacts I can put the word out to, but mainly I want to go back to the Dutchman.”

  Ugh, I really do not want to waste another night sitting on my ass in the Dutchman, trying to look hard. Sarah doesn’t seem to notice that they think we’re the bar mascots, but I do and it’s not something I’m super thrilled about. “Yes, because that’s worked so well thus far.”

  “Don’t you sass me, sidekick,” she mutters around the edge of her chewing pendant.

  “Sidekick?”

  “That’s a funny-sounding echo,” says Calamity as she closes her notebook and locks it. It looks like one of those locking diaries, except the lock has a thumbprint reader on it. “Now, as I was saying: the Dutchman is one of the main networking points for the metahuman underground in New Port. If Utopia is pulling off other robberies, she’ll need lackeys. Supervillains ain’t known for doing their own menials. Someone’s got to drive the getaway van. If she was looking for muscle that wouldn’t lose their heads when things got weird, the Dutchman would be a good place for her to shop. Last time we were there, I didn’t exactly make it a secret we wanted to find her. We show our face again, shake the tree a bit more, and I’m betting something interesting will fall out.”

  “Okay, when do you want to do it?”

  Sarah considers for a moment. “You feeling better?”

  “Yeah.” In fact, I’m kind of embarrassed by how angry I was.

  “Then let’s do it right now. Daylight’s burning, partner.”

  • • •

  Finding a safe place to change into our capes and stow our stuff in the middle of downtown during the day is a larger challenge than I’d have expected, but soon enough we’re riding on the roof of a blue line train out to the meatpacking district. Calamity sits cross-legged with one hand holding down her hat, the other clenched on some pipes running across the carriage’s roof. We have to sit close to each other to be able to speak when the train is moving at speed. Calamity keeps flicking her eyes away, probably to make sure nobody is watching us and calling the cops.

  The Flying Dutchman seems to be a twenty-four-hour kind of place, and the door opens right up when we pound on it. Calamity hands over her guns to the bouncer, who smiles at me, but doesn’t card either one of us. Do metahuman bars just not bother with liquor licenses or something? Anyway, we’ve barely sat down when somebody bolts up from his seat and takes off for the back door. He’s got short brown hair and isn’t very tall. It’s not too crowded today. He might as well have walked up and introduced himself: Hi, I’m the lead you’ve been looking for.

  Well, he might have introduced himself to Calamity that way. This is all still new to me, and I don’t understand the significance of it until she’s tapping me on the hand and gesturing with a tilt of her head. I make to get out of my seat and she clamps her hand down on my wrist. “Hold it, partner. Don’t want it being too obvious we’re taking an interest in him. We’ll give him time to get home.”

  “You know where he lives?”

  “Not as of yet, but I’m possessed of a notion as to how we’re going to find out.” As the rear door snaps shut, Calamity gets out of her chair and crosses to the table the man left behind. There’s a crumpled napkin and a half-finished pint of beer. She pulls some tweezers and a plastic baggie out of her jacket, picks the napkin up with the tweezers and runs it around the glass’s rim before folding it into the baggie and sealing it.

  “Um, ew.”

  “Caping ain’t always glamorous, hun.”

  “What are we going to do with that?”

  “Us? Nothing. But my ex might be able to do a thing or two about this.”

  “How?”

  She shrugs. “He’s a wizard. He’s going to do wizardy things.”

  • • •

  The wizard likes to hang out in a musty used bookstore out at the edge of town, on the second floor in a corner near the back. It’s dim here, and the fluorescents flicker. The books are all leather with fading gilt letters. He’s a black kid, skinny and crouched behind a stack of fat books—ratty, leather, with dimly gilded pages.

  “Hey Charlie, we got a job for you,” says Sarah. We can’t exactly walk right in the way we were dressed at the Dutchman, so we’re going as Sarah and Danny. There’s an almost sacrilegious feeling in the air. We’re doing cape work in street clothes. It’s just wrong. Caping is supposed to be the thing we do when I want to stop being in the real world for a while.

  “Who’s this?” says Charlie. He pushes his glasses farther up his nose.

  “This is Danny,” says Sarah. “She’s cool.”

  “Yeah? How cool?”

  “She’s a cape.”

  Charlie brightens. “All right, just needed to be sure we could talk. Have a seat.”

  “Ain’t no call for that,” says Sarah in the Calamity voice. “Wouldn’t be bringing her around here if there was.”

  “I’m just being careful, Sarah.”

  “Sure.” Sarah pulls out a chair and sits down. “Careful. That’s you all over.”

  I sit too. “So, uh, Sarah says you’re a wizard. Like figuratively? Or…?”

  “What, you don’t believe in magic?”

  Flashes of Graywytch flick through my mind. Surely they wouldn’t keep someone like that around if she couldn’t deliver the goods. And Valkyrja is a straight-up mythological being. So, yes, I do. But it’s one of those things that doesn’t sit easily. Technology can be explained. Even hypertech sort of makes sense most of the time. Magic is something else, though. Magic is things like witches spinning thread out of moonlight, and using that to weave a cord for binding lies. It’s dangerous and unpredictable and not easy to replicate. Supposedly it’s more common in parts of Europe and a lot of India, but even there it’s a relic of the past.

  “No, I believe in magic.” I’m not sure I believe someone at our school can work any magic, though.

  Charlie must have heard some of that subtext in my voice. He smiles like he knows something I don’t. “So what can you do?”

  “Um, here.” I pull a marble out of my pocket. Nervous butterflies tickle my stomach. This is something I haven’t shown anyone before, and even with all the extra practice I’ve put in, I’m suddenly afraid of screwing it up and looking stupid. When I close my eyes to get a good look at the lattice, I’m taken aback by what I see. Things seem somehow more distinct in this corner of the shop, distinct and yet looser. I open my eyes in surprise. Charlie’s got a look on his face like I’ve suddenly caught his interest.

  “Go on,” he says.

  “Am I missing something?” asks Sarah.

  “Yes.” He waves at her to pipe down. “Go on, Danny.”

  You practiced this, I remind myself. The lattice is searingly bright in the darkness. The marble rolls out of my hand, and as it rolls I see the first trails of its momentum. Quickly I seize them, twine them about my mind, and…pulling? Pull? Push? Pull them through my own pattern in the lattice. A strange sensation, like thread running through the flesh of my fingers, mirrored somewhere deep in my chest, a strange rustling, almost cold and buzzing. The marble stops falling, then goes up. It
s momentum expended, it pauses at the top of its “fall” and then gravity reasserts itself. It begins to fall again, and again I use the energy of its fall to send it upwards. The marble is now moving smoothly, up and down, up and down, never falling and yet always falling.

  I open my eyes, and am almost surprised to see the marble bouncing in the air. It’s difficult to focus my gaze while I’m concentrating on the lattice, and the world keeps splitting in two. Prickles of sweat break out on my forehead. “See?” I say, and that’s enough to push me over the edge. The threads slip through my mind and the marble plummets to the floor.

  “That’s uh, hm. That’s…really neat,” says Charlie.

  “I can also bench press a school bus,” I mutter, cheeks hot.

  “She saved that airliner last week,” says Sarah. I shoot her a grateful smile. Sarah’s own smile is a little awkward.

  Great. She thinks I’m an idiot.

  “Oh!” says Charlie. “That was you? Nice!”

  “Thanks.”

  “So what’s this job you’ve got?” he says to Sarah.

  Sarah pulls the plastic baggie with the paper napkin in it out of her backpack. “This was being used by a fellow we’re interested in following. I wiped it all over his beer glass, too.”

  “You didn’t touch it, did you?”

  “No,” says Sarah, as if he’s asked a stupid question. “It’s pristine. Can you work with this?”

  “It’ll take a few minutes to get ready, if you don’t mind sticking around?”

  “We don’t have any place to be,” I say.

  Charlie carefully sets his books on a chair next to him and clears the space on the table he’s claimed as his own. He pulls a small silver bowl from his backpack, about six inches across, so shallow it’s almost a dish, and engraved with intricate etchings of strange symbols across its entire surface. After snapping on some gloves like the ones doctors wear, he pulls the napkin out of the baggie and sets it in the bowl. For a few moments it looks like he’s lost something as he pats his pockets and sweater, but then with a look of triumph he produces a cigarette lighter.

  “Uh…are you going to…?”

  “The smoke detector in this part of the building is always on the fritz,” he says absently.

  “Funny how that works out,” says Sarah.

  “Shh!” says Charlie. He lights the napkin, and as it burns he sprinkles a pinch of granular powder into the flames from a small pouch on a string around his neck that he pulls from under his T-shirt. The flames flare, bright and aquamarine blue. When they die, the ashes sit limp and black in the center of the dish. Charlie sifts through them with his finger and finds something: a small, clear bead.

  “Either of you two bring a map?”

  “Um, we could try to find one around—” I begin.

  “Will a computer do?” asks Sarah as she opens her backpack.

  “It’s worth a shot,” says Charlie. Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out a thin leather cord and loops it through the bead, tying it off with a knot.

  Sarah pulls a tablet out of her bag and brings a map of New Port up on the screen. Charlie holds the bead over the map, and lets it hang from the cord like a pendulum. Slowly, the cord begins to drift toward the south half of the map, and then stops, hanging at an angle in midair. Hairs stand up all the way down my back, tight and chilly. Yeah, yeah, I can fly and shit, but…well, magic is spooky. I don’t know how to explain it. It just is.

  “Wow,” I whisper.

  “You like it?” Charlie smiles hugely. “I wasn’t sure it’d work with a computer. This implies a lot of things for my next project.”

  “Looks like it’s pointing to somewhere in Lacey,” says Sarah. Lacey is a suburban neighborhood in southwest New Port. “Can I zoom in?”

  “Go for it,” says Charlie.

  Sarah puts two fingers on the map and slides them outward. Our view zooms in closer and the pendulum takes a sharp swing to the west, ending up hanging at an angle greater than forty-five degrees and pointing off the map.

  “Okay, pan over.”

  Sarah flicks the map to the west, and the pendulum begins to move again. Through trial and error, we find the place. An apartment block in Lacey. When we move the map around, the bead stays locked on it, moving perfectly in sync. When Charlie moves his hand the bead stays locked in position, no matter where he pulls the cord.

  “That’s your spot,” says Charlie.

  “That’s where he is right now?” asks Sarah.

  “No, that’s where he spends most of his time. You might not see him right away, but he’ll be back sooner or later.”

  “This is so cool,” I say. Charlie smiles. Sarah scribbles down the address on a scrap of paper. “Yeah, he’s a dork, but he’s useful.”

  “Shove it, Sarah,” he says amiably.

  “Can you find the apartment number?”

  Charlie shakes his head. “The map doesn’t zoom in that close.”

  “If we took you there, could you find it?” says Sarah.

  “Uh, look, I’m not really into caping anymore. I’d rather focus on my projects.”

  Sarah sets her pencil down. “It’s just for one day…”

  Charlie takes his glasses off and inspects them for dirt and smudges. “Sarah, we have been over this—”

  “This is important!”

  “It’s always important. But you can handle it without me.”

  “Oh, come on!”

  “No, it’s fine.” I lay a hand on her arm. “We can figure out which one is his on our own.”

  Sarah looks like she wants to argue more, but nods. “Fine. Thank you. We really appreciate the help you’ve given us.”

  “No problem.” He slips his glasses back on and smiles. “If you wanna swing by again, feel free.”

  “We might do that. See you around.” I snag Sarah’s sleeve and pull her with me before she can say something else. We’re almost out of the store before I think to let her go. I was sort of expecting her to shrug me off.

  Sarah is blushing and won’t meet my eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You know, I think I’ve seen him before. How many of us at school are…you know?”

  She looks relieved to have a question to answer. “Well, technically Charlie is baseline, but he has an esoteric skill. The vocabulary isn’t too precise. To answer your question, uh, there’s maybe ten I know of. That’s probably not everybody.”

  “Have you gone caping with all of them?”

  Sarah shakes her head. “No. Just the ones that—” She seems to think better of saying something. “Well, that seem like they’d be good at it.”

  We get back to her bike. Sarah slips her helmet over her head, cranks the engine on, and begins backing her bike out of the spot she parked in. “Let’s go pay our buddy a visit.”

  Something tickles the back of my mind. “Wait, what time is it?”

  “About four, why?”

  “Shit. I can’t. I have to get home.” Yeah, Dad chased me out of the house, but I know from experience that a little thing like getting shouted out of the building doesn’t mean I’m not grounded anymore. The longer I’m away, the worse it might be. Or maybe it won’t be an issue at all. It’s unpredictable, and that always makes me reluctant to go back home when things are like this. But I have to go. I’ve spent too long out already. I try to keep the worry off my face.

  “Oh,” says Sarah, disappointed. “What do you have for seventh period on Monday?”

  “Study hall.”

  “Wanna cut?”

  “Sure. I want to get this Utopia thing wrapped up.”

  Sarah smiles behind her helmet and slams the visor down. She peels out from parking lot with a sky-shaking roar and is gone.

  Well. Now I go home and see if I’m lucky today.

  • • •

  Monday comes, and it’s harder than ever to care about class when I know that once school is over I get to go caping again. Finally, the
bell rings and study hall begins. I’m getting pretty good at cutting study hall. Someday that’s going to catch up with me, but not today. Calamity meets me at the agreed spot, an out-of-the-way nook in a parking garage downtown. Top level, below a shopping complex, and behind an elevator shaft. The place is littered with cigarette butts and stamped-flat plastic cups. A cold, wet breeze brushes in through the open gap above the waist-high cement walls. Calamity noses her bike around the corner, and coasts to a purring stop next to me. She rests her boots on the ground and sits up in the saddle. She flicks the visor up and squints at me.

  “Hun, it’s still daylight out,” she says.

  “So?” I step away from the wall I’ve been leaning on.

  “So I’ve been thinking: if you’re gonna be caping in sight of the sun, you really oughta pick some real colors.”

  “Ah. Uh, hold on.” I press the third blister on my wrist, and my suit shifts back to green. “Better?”

  “I’d prefer something in blue and white, but that’ll have to do.”

  “Yeah, well…” I reach for my pockets but this suit doesn’t have any. It makes feeling awkward so much worse.

  “Honestly, hun.” Calamity puts her hand on my shoulder. “You deserve to call yourself Dreadnought as much as anybody.”

  “Well, I dunno. Let’s just find this guy, okay?”

  She snorts. “Got the GPS all set. Stick close; ain’t gonna wait on a stray.”

  Calamity slams her visor down and cranks her throttle. The bike traces a screeching half circle of smoking rubber across the ground and then bolts down the ramp and out of the garage.

  I step over to the garage’s wall, swing my legs over it, and let myself fall for a few moments before I catch myself in the lattice. Calamity has pulled back to street-legal driving, so I have plenty of time to fume as we make our tortuously slow way through the city. Why is she hassling me to be Dreadnought? There are times when there’s nothing I want more in the world. But I’m also ashamed to even think about it. Dreadnought knew no fear, and I’m a coward. When I first got my powers I thought courage would come with them, but I can’t even stand up to Dad. How the hell am I supposed to save the world, too? It would be easier for both of us if she’d stop poking at it, if she’d realize I’m pathetic and weak, and let me do this my own way. We’re gonna find Utopia and snitch her out to the Legion. I owe Dreadnought that much. And then I’ll go be a girl in private, and stop teasing myself with these daydreams about being someone important.