As if a weight had been lifted from my shoulders: a weight I’d carried all my life without noticing.
I shifted my viewpoint out of my head so I could see the new me.
The. New. Me.
ZIRCON SHONE LIKE A DIAMOND
Kim Lam was the one who’d put on a stagy white costume and tied a scarf around her eyes like Pin the Tail on the Donkey.
Kim wasn’t with us anymore. Zircon was.
Ninety-Nine had exuded the height of human potential. An achievable hero: everything you wanted to strive for.
But Zircon wasn’t human. As I put on the mask, I’d unconsciously shrunk just a bit to turn from flesh to stone. The result was something more ancient than Homo sapiens. More ancient even than the first living cell.
Zircon was what I could feel when I held a rock in my hand: four and a half billion years of existence made solid. Majestic. Powerful.
Me.
“HOLY FUCK,” JOOLS WHISPERED
She had opened her eyes. “Holy fuck. Holy fuck.”
“JOOLS,” ZIRCON SAID, “STOP BABBLING.”
Zircon’s voice was higher than Kim’s. Was that a trick of the Light? The same way it warped a Spark’s fingerprints?
No, I thought, it’s just Zircon. Kim’s voice was pitched low, trying to sound exactly half-and-half between male and female. Zircon didn’t play that game. Zircon was outside male/female distinctions.
When you look at a rock, do you ask its gender? The question never crosses your mind. Zircon didn’t think about voice pitch, or the hang of shirt and pants. If (heaven forbid!) I developed thirty-six triple-Ds, it wouldn’t matter. On Zircon, no one would care or notice.
At least that’s how my Halo appeared to me. Maybe Jools felt something different. She was still gaping.
“Jools, focus,” I said. “Put on your helmet. Turn back into Ninety-Nine.”
She didn’t move. She’d hung the helmet on my bedpost when she started working on the costume. I grabbed it and tried to hand it to her. She flinched away.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “Hold still.” Jools froze, almost in fear, until I plunked the helmet onto her head.
JUST LIKE THAT, SHE BECAME NINETY-NINE
Her Halo flamed into life, but this time it didn’t awe me. It was warm and familiar. We smiled at each other as she adjusted the helmet and did up the chin strap. “Fuck, you’re intimidating,” she said.
“Nah. Same as ever.”
Suddenly, we were hugging as hard as we could squeeze, like friends who hadn’t seen each other in centuries. “A zircon?” she said in my ear. “Yeah, right.”
I laughed. “Says the person who calls herself Ninety-Nine. Couldn’t even go for a hundred?”
“Adaptive coloration.”
“Same shit, different day.”
I gave Ninety-Nine one last squeeze, then let her go. “Do you think the others are ready?”
“You know how it works,” she said. “Always right in the nick of time.”
She gestured toward the door. We exited into the hall just as Aria and Dakini emerged from their rooms.
THEY WERE WEARING THEIR COSTUMES TOO
Aria’s came straight from the Carnival in Venice: a golden gown trimmed with lace on every possible hem. The dress was not a full-blown Madame de Pompadour outfit, but it still flounced with multiple petticoats. I knew exactly how Miranda got it—she’d sung a noon-hour recital for the chamber music society and had commissioned a suitably operatic costume. Miranda couldn’t conceive of dressing “just good enough”; her clothes always had to be perfect.
The costume included gold lamé gloves and calf-high golden boots. The entire seed-pearl output of a clam bed lined the sleeves and décolletage. But the costume’s most dominant feature was the huge feathered headpiece, serving as both mask and crown. Like many Carnival masks, its nose was a bird beak, sharp enough to look lethal. Black feathers fanned out around the face, contrasting dramatically with Aria’s blond hair. Gold wires ran through the hair to keep the headpiece in place; the wires also framed the mask’s blackness in bright gold filigree.
I’d seen the headpiece before. As Miranda had said, she’d worn it at Halloween—not with the gold dress, but with long black robes. The ominous robes had been spooky, but the gown worked even better for intimidation. There’s something daunting about a beautiful woman dressed so extravagantly out of everyone else’s league. Add the bird-of-prey mask, multiply by Aria’s Halo, and the impact would stop mortals dead in their tracks.
NO SUCH EDGINESS WITH DAKINI
Blingapalooza. Dakini jangled with every movement, like a dancer who made her own musical accompaniment.
Her costume was predominately violet: the same color I saw when Dakini used her powers. But dozens of other colors were splashed in too. Perhaps the violet simply stood out more because of what I’d previously seen.
The basic outfit was a choli blouse (short-sleeved, baring the midriff) with a gauzy chiffon skirt over pajama-style pants. The clothes were accessorized with uncountable silver bracelets, anklets, and necklaces; elaborate jeweled piercings in ears, nose, and navel; and a foot-high silver crown that resembled Angkor Wat. The bottom of the crown extended around Dakini’s eyes, circling them with whorls of silver wire. It was scarcely a mask at all, barely more than wire-rimmed glasses. But it was enough to change Shar into a goddess.
Not a stately goddess: a dancing, easygoing divinity who mocked religious pretension. Her Halo laughed and whispered, “Don’t take yourself so seriously! Just let go.”
I thought, She’s the most dangerous of us all. The one you forgot to fear.
Then again, I was Zircon. I had nothing to fear from anyone, least of all my teammates.
“WE RULE,” NINETY-NINE SAID
“That we do,” Aria agreed.
“Ready for action?” Dakini asked.
“Let’s rock,” Zircon said. I said.
We left the house. As we crossed the parking lot through snow that shouldn’t have been falling, I shifted my viewpoint ahead of us. I saw exactly what I expected: four superheroes doing the slow walk, backlit by snow-steaming streetlights.
9
Unconformity*
I’VE MADE A DECISION
Up until now, I’ve been talking about Miranda, Shar, and Jools. Suddenly, they’re Aria, Dakini, and Ninety-Nine. Should I keep using their civilian names to avoid confusion? Or should I switch to who they actually are?
If you could see their Spark identities, the answer would be obvious. Sparks simply aren’t the same as their human counterparts. Their bearings are different, their voices are different, even their body proportions seem different. Your brain’s fusiform gyrus says, “Totally not the same person.” In the abstract, I know that Aria “is” Miranda, but it feels ridiculous: like claiming that a sweater is the sheep that produced the wool.
Then again, I’m the one who believes Kimberley, Kimmi, and Kim were all different people.
Which they were.
You might prefer me to stick with the names you know. But if I say “Miranda” when I’m talking about Aria, it’s a lie. I don’t mind lying for a good cause, but when I changed from Kimmi to Kim, I promised myself I’d stop lying just to make things easier.
Besides, you know us super-folk: We’d rather punch problems in the nose than dance around them.
So I’m going to call Aria “Aria” and Miranda “Miranda.” Et cetera.
Using the wrong names would piss them both off. I don’t need that. My life is complicated enough.
10
Bedrock Exposure
WHEN WE WALKED PAST THE VAN, IT MADE ME THINK OF RICHARD
I cast my Spark-o-Vision back into the house and saw him in Shar’s bed, sleeping off the sedative from the tranq dart. If Invie’s memory wipe worked, Richard would eventually wake up with no clue what had happened. I wondered if Shar had left him a note to explain; I wondered what the note would conveniently not mention. But unlike Shar, I didn’t
pry into other people’s privacy.
Said Zircon while peeking into Shar’s room.
“SO WHERE ARE WE GOING?” ARIA ASKED
Ninety-Nine answered immediately. “Adam Popigai’s office. Czerny Center, room 5040.”
“Do you think we’ll find anything?” Aria asked. “Whatever Popigai is up to, he’d be crazy to leave anything incriminating in his office. That’s the first place anyone would look.”
“Of course it is,” Ninety-Nine agreed. “But if we don’t look there at all, we’re idiots. Besides, who knows? With all our powers and senses, we may actually find something.”
Dakini said, “The Light is paving our way. It will ensure we aren’t stopped by dead ends.”
Aria made a disgusted sound. “You think some deus will machina us just because we’re Sparks?”
“Yes.” Dakini smiled. “Aria, dear, you still haven’t grasped the concept of plausible deniability. We can’t wait for information to fall into our laps, but if we take reasonable steps to search for evidence, the Light will have the excuse it needs to help us.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Aria said.
“It never does,” Dakini replied. “And please keep questioning it. Once in a while, it will truly be bullshit. The Light has to keep us honest.”
NINETY-NINE SAID, “SEE YOU AT POPIGAI’S OFFICE.”
She took off running. Aria yelled after her, “You think you’ll beat me? I can fly at the speed of sound!”
Ninety-Nine didn’t bother to reply; she ran damned fast for someone wearing bulky hockey equipment. But of course, Aria was faster. She took to the sky and shot off like a bullet, including a gunlike crack of sonic boom.
I looked at Dakini. “Sooner or later, we’ll learn to stick together.” I smiled. “But not right now.”
I shrank to wasp size and jumped into the air. The cape looked great as it billowed behind me; it helped hide that I was once again clutching my coattails and flapping like a fool.
THE SNOW CONTINUED TO FALL
I was small enough to be missed by most of the flakes, but I did collide with a few on my way to campus. When you fly like I do, in jerky fits and starts, you just don’t have enough control to avoid every flake in the air.
After a few such collisions, my costume was soaked with snowmelt. I was cold but not cold. I could feel the chilly dampness, but it didn’t affect me. I was, after all, a rock; and while rocks aren’t 100 percent impervious to low temperatures, they aren’t in danger unless they get super-cold (below -100° C) or they’re whipsawed back and forth, cold-hot-cold-hot (which can make them crack and exfoliate). The fear that I’d felt in the alley, when I worried about freezing to death, had been misplaced: Small mammals may be subject to hypothermia, but sand grains simply don’t care.
So when I reached the Czerny Center, I was soggy but serene. I headed for the nearest doorway—a back door with a wide concrete overhang—but I stopped when I saw it wasn’t empty.
A guy and a girl were glued to each other under the overhang, making out as thoroughly as a couple can possibly do while fully clothed and vertical. Both had unzipped their coats so they could press together more tightly. They had the look of people who would stay where they were for hours, until their lips and jaws were so sore they absolutely had to stop.
I could have sneaked past them—they wouldn’t have noticed a rhino, let alone wasp-sized me. But temptation. Curiosity. Which I rationalized as concern for their safety.
I GREW TO ALMOST FULL HEIGHT
I stayed a millimeter shorter than Kim, so my skin stayed stony instead of flesh. Call it my “Maximum Zircon” height. Then I sauntered toward the couple.
Neither Kimberley, Kimmi, nor Kim would have considered bothering those people. Zircon was less deferential, and I wanted to test my Halo. How did it affect normal humans? Would a couple with their minds on each other even notice me?
They did. I had barely taken a step before they detached from their kiss and snapped their heads toward me. Their arms stayed around each other, but they stopped squeezing. Their grips loosened as if they’d gone numb. The guy gaped; the girl did too for a fraction of a second, then closed her mouth quickly.
Neither spoke. After a long moment, I said, “I’m Zircon. I’m a Spark.”
The guy said, “You sure are,” then dried up for words.
The girl said, “I’ve never seen a Spark before.”
She smiled at me. I can’t describe that smile. It wasn’t shy, but it also wasn’t a come-on. She didn’t seem flustered or in awe, like she might be when meeting someone important, but I’m sure she didn’t smile that way at very many people.
The guy seemed more nervous. He pulled the girl closer, not protectively, but as if he needed to hug someone. “Is something bad happening?” he asked. “Like aliens or something?”
“Not aliens,” I said, “but something. This snow isn’t natural, and there’ve been several strange events on campus in the past few hours. If I were you, I’d go home and stay inside.”
“Okay,” the girl said.
The guy looked at her with a bit of surprise, then looked back at me. “Okay.”
They didn’t move. They just kept staring.
After a strange little silence, I shrank out of sight and stayed that way until they left.
THE ENCOUNTER MADE ME FEEL WEIRD
Kim didn’t like affecting strangers so strongly. First, because Kim was wary of drawing attention; that seldom worked out well. Second, because Kim didn’t know what to do after drawing attention. (Hence, Kim’s celibate lifestyle.) And third, because it seemed wrong to overwhelm people for no good reason.
I was hitting them with a superpower: basically, controlling their emotions. I hated when Shar had done that to me, and I decided I hated doing it to others. As I slipped into Czerny Center, I thought, Does this mean I have to avoid normal people? That I can only be Zircon around folks who resist my Halo? Maybe I’ll never be comfortable except with Sparks and Darklings.
I continued to ponder that question as I flew toward room 5040, right up to the moment when I ran into Nicholas.
HE LOOKED DISTRACTED
Eyes closed, utterly motionless. He had pressed himself into a recessed doorway, and he must have been there for some time—the door behind him had cobwebs in all the corners.
Nicholas seemed to be concentrating hard on something; perhaps using a supernatural power. But I saw no glow around him. Nicholas was just as I’d first seen him in the police station: ashen, transparent, and dwindling below the waist. The only difference was his eyes. They were now dark pits with nothing eyelike inside them.
I wondered if this was what he actually looked like. Perhaps when I’d seen him before, he had consciously made himself have eyes, the same way he could look like a tennis star if he exerted himself. He might have dressed himself up with real eyes because he’d heard that a Kimmi Lam was in the station.
Or perhaps he was dressed up now, with his eyes deliberately deleted. After Sparks arrived in the world, many Darklings began to copy them: wearing costumes and adopting codenames, especially among plebeians. Maybe the hollow-eyed look was Nicholas’s version of a mask. But unlike Sparks, Darklings had no superpowers to give themselves anonymity. I recognized Nicholas instantly, despite his lack of eyeballs.
Perhaps he was hiding in shadows—all the building’s lights were off except for the EXIT signs. But to me, the Czerny Center was as bright as day, and Nicholas stood out like a black-and-white photograph against a colored background.
I WAS STILL SOME DISTANCE AWAY WHEN I SAW HIM
I’d been flying with my viewpoint centered far ahead, the better to spot trouble before I reached it. With that much advance warning, I could have avoided Nicholas entirely. Kim might have done so, but I couldn’t say for sure. I was losing my sense of how Kim would react. I was Zircon, and Zircon was confrontational.
I liked the idea of sneaking up so microscopically small that Nicholas wouldn’t know I was th
ere. Then I’d shoot to Max Zirc size, go “Boo!” and scare the ghost.
But as I approached, Nicholas jerked his head in my direction. I didn’t think he could see or hear me, but who knows how keen a ghost’s senses are? Still hoping to take him by surprise, I snapped up to Max Zirc height so quickly it would seem that I’d appeared out of nowhere. “Don’t worry,” I told him, “I’m just saying hello.”
Despite my reassurances, Nicholas went more misty—his instinct was obviously to desolidify in the face of unknown threats. But he didn’t take any other visible action. He looked tense but under control. “Guess I’m not as invisible as I thought.”
“Guess not,” I agreed. I resisted the urge to disguise my voice. Either my Spark anonymity would work or it wouldn’t. If it didn’t, Nicholas would recognize me even if I talked funny. He’d seen me only an hour earlier, and a top hat wasn’t nearly enough to make me look like a different person. Even worse, my eyes were wrapped with the scarf that Nicholas himself had given me; he would know it in a flash, unless my superpower clouded his mind.
It did. No recognition. After a moment, I said, “I’m Zircon. And you?”
“Wraith.”
“Inventive name. What are you doing here, Wraith?”
“I could ask you the same question.”
“And I’d give the same answer as you,” I said. “We’re both here to search the office of Professor Adam Popigai. Correct?”
He hesitated, then said, “Correct.”
“Because we’re worried about what happened in a lab that he controlled. Six Darklings, a portal, an explosion, and more.”
Nicholas nodded.
“Then the only question,” I said, “is why we’ve made this our business. And to show I’m a good sport, I’ll answer first. My teammates and I consider ourselves Waterloo’s guardians. We’re investigating this mess because it looks like the start of something bad.”
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