All Those Explosions Were Someone Else's Fault

by James Alan Gardner

  The Goblin sighed. If he could feel my Halo, it wasn’t overwhelming him. “There’s nothing to tell,” he said. “This man Popigai asked for a stall. He showed me samples of what he could make. They were interesting. So I put him in contact with my staff and they arranged everything.”

  “How did Popigai find you?” I asked. “Or did you find him?”

  “Someone I know introduced us,” the Goblin said. “And vouched for him.”

  “Who?”

  The Goblin looked uncomfortable. “That’s supposed to be confidential.”

  “Whoever it was,” I said, “either they were in league with Diamond, which means they’re partly responsible for the damage here tonight, or else Diamond fooled that person into helping him, in which case, I’m sure the person would be mad and want Diamond stopped. Please help me stop him. Tell me who introduced you to Diamond.”

  The Goblin chewed on one of his knuckles. After a moment, he said, “It was Elaine Vandermeer.”

  Ouch. But not a surprise.

  ELAINE WAS AMBITIOUS IN THE OLD-SCHOOL SENSE

  I mean “ambitious” as the word is used in Julius Caesar. Not merely eager to get ahead in the world, but avidly steamrolling competitors, allies, bystanders, and stray puppies in order to wield power. Elaine might look like an eighteen-year-old with a fifty-year-old’s haircut, but on a scale of ambition from one to ten, where one was a doorknob and ten was a great white shark, Elaine would use the doorknob to beat the shark to death. I had no idea how she’d made Diamond’s acquaintance, but she’d do it in a heartbeat if it gave her any advantage.

  Elaine’s involvement allowed me to guess why her brother was in town. He could have found out what she was up to—a ghost has plenty of ways to spy on others. Nicholas could have followed Elaine to Waterloo in the hope of preventing her from doing anything crazy. It would hurt the entire family if Elaine committed some atrocity … or at least, if she got caught.

  And who knows, it wasn’t impossible that Nicholas actually cared about his sister. Perhaps the Dark Conversion hadn’t completely destroyed his humanity. Perhaps something inside him was still capable of family feeling.

  Or even love.

  Don’t go mushy, I told myself. Nicholas could also have come to Waterloo because he was in cahoots with Elaine, and therefore with Diamond. Nicholas might be part of some conspiracy that included Lilith and all the other Darklings we’d seen.

  Then again, Nicholas had prevented the Market from collapsing. If he was on Diamond’s side, Nicholas wouldn’t have done that. Unless …

  No. Just stop. Speculation only wasted time. I told myself to stick to the facts instead of making excuses for what Nicholas might have done.

  “Where are they now?” I asked the Goblin. “Elaine and Popigai. Can you contact them?”

  The Goblin sighed again. “My staff hate me giving out details like that. I’m supposed to keep everything confidential.” He turned his eyes toward me. “I wouldn’t be doing you a favor, helping you find this Diamond. He’s a legend in our community. He’s bad.”

  I said, “I know he’s a Mad Genius. One of the worst.”

  “More than that,” the Goblin said. “We Darklings have a system for ranking Sparks by power level. We classify Sparks like weapons. The least powerful are Daggers, then Swords, then Pistols…”

  “What class is Diamond?”

  “Hiroshima.”

  “Oh. Damn.” I didn’t know where my teammates and I ranked on the Darklings’ scale—grenades? bazookas?—but even the four of us together didn’t add up to a nuke.

  Then again, it didn’t matter. “However powerful Diamond is,” I said, “we can’t just walk away. Someone has to stop him. My teammates and I are the only Sparks in town.”

  “Sparks,” the Goblin said as if he pitied me. “Whether you’re heroes or villains, you have to be on some crusade.” He laid his hand lightly on mine. “Oh, you kids.”

  Without warning, he upended his teacup onto the table. Chalky liquid splashed across the tablecloth, spelling out a local address. “That’s a bed-and-breakfast,” the Goblin said. “Darklings only. Elaine Vandermeer wouldn’t stay anywhere else.” He touched my hand again. “You can keep the knives. They like you. When you catch up with Diamond, give him a stab from me.”

  The Goblin smiled fiercely with all those sharp teeth. Suddenly, he didn’t seem so childlike. Then he faded from sight, leaving his toothy grin behind for several seconds after the rest of him had vanished.

  Apparently, the Goblin was a fan of Lewis Carroll as well as Christina Rossetti.

  I SHRANK AND FLEW OFF TO FIND MY TEAMMATES

  They weren’t inside the building. I went out to the parking lot and saw a dazzle of flashing lights from a recently arrived fire truck.

  No police or ambulances. I overheard a firefighter say that none were coming, at least not soon. No one had predicted the snowstorm, so no one had prearranged snow-removal crews. By the time any plows hit the streets, the city was impassably deep in snowdrifts. Also, impassably deep in car accidents. The mayhem at the Market was a national-level crisis—dozens of Darklings were dead, which made it front-page news. Nevertheless, Waterloo Region didn’t have any more first responders available.

  The firefighters had told my teammates, “We’ll take it from here.” In places more experienced with having Sparks, emergency services developed plans for how to use local heroes productively. However, the captain of this fire crew clearly regarded costumed freaks as crazy amateurs who ought to be sidelined. By the time I flew in, my teammates were leaning against a closed schnitzel stand and taking a breather.

  I landed and grew to Max Zirc height. “All done?” I asked.

  “We’ve rescued everyone we could,” Aria said. “Only corpses left in the building. How ’bout you?”

  “Spent time talking to the Goblin.”

  “Is he the one who fixed our costumes?” Ninety-Nine asked. She grabbed a handful of her jersey and held it up. “This hasn’t been this clean since Gretzky was actually on the Oilers.”

  “Not just clean,” Dakini said. “Our clothes are repaired.” She looked at me. “The Goblin’s magic?”

  “He was grateful for our help. From now on, our costumes will clean and mend themselves.”

  “Awesome,” Ninety-Nine said.

  “Worrisome,” Aria corrected. “Not only are we now surrounded by magic, so we’re detectable by anything that can sense magical energy, but who knows what enchantments were added besides cleaning and sewing? For all we know, the longer we wear the clothes, the more we’ll want to do what the Goblin tells us.”

  “Feel free to take off the costume,” Ninety-Nine said. “Then spend a gazillion dollars buying a new one after every fight.”

  “Talk clothes later,” I said. “We have more serious things to discuss.”

  As quickly as I could, I told the others about Diamond and Elaine. All I said about Elaine was what the Goblin had given me—nothing about the connection between her and Nicholas. Then again, I’d never told my roommates much about Nicholas either.

  Kim: not a sharer. Zircon: ditto. Maybe for Kim 2.0, that ought to change.

  I did, of course, share that I’d seen “Wraith” again, and that he’d helped save the building. Maybe I was too insistent on that point. “He must be a decent guy, right? He really exerted himself to save lives.”

  But I centered my talk on Diamond. Popigai = Diamond = Hiroshima-level mass murderer who’d waltzed up from Australia to plague Waterloo. It wouldn’t be hard for a Mad Genius to fake credentials from distant universities—he’d just have to hack some computers, and bribe or mind control a few people. (“Why yes, I know Dr. Popigai. A brilliant researcher. I recommend him highly.”) Considering how eager UW was to achieve a presence in Cape Tech, the engineering faculty would leap at any chance to hire a Spark. And Diamond had used his Mad Genius skillz to keep from being recognized. Since he was known for his diamondlike appearance, he’d overlaid his crystalli
ne self with steel. But I’d seen that he reverted to diamond in order to use his powers.

  “Why is he here?” Dakini asked. “What does he want?”

  Ninety-Nine accessed her mysterious database. “He’s an anarchist,” she said, glowing green. “The kind that publishes manifestos. Bottom line, he hates Darklings. Truly, madly, deeply. Most authorities think that Darklings hurt him personally. The Dark killed my Dad! That sort of thing. But his manifestos don’t give personal details. They’re all about the horror of soulless thugs seizing power, establishing a parasite-ocracy, blah blah blah.

  “Anyway,” Ninety-Nine continued, “Diamond’s schemes always damage the Dark. Giga-damage. Which for Diamond means disrupting governments, crashing the financial system, et cetera. Since Darklings have power and money, you can only seriously hurt them by demolishing major targets. That’s what Diamond does, and he doesn’t care what happens to innocent bystanders. If blowing up a building will bankrupt some billionaire, Diamond will do it. Never mind if it also kills hundreds of ordinary people.”

  “Charming,” Aria said.

  “This doesn’t make sense,” Dakini said. “If Diamond hates Darklings, why did he work with them as Popigai? Not just with Elaine Vandermeer, whoever she is. What about the Darklings in the lab? They were clearly following some plan cooked up by Popigai.”

  “And they ended up dead,” I said. “You heard what Wraith said in Popigai’s office. Darklings will cooperate with Sparks on projects that aim to combine the Dark and the Light. The holy grail is to give superpowers to Darklings. That’s what Diamond did; we saw the results a few minutes ago.”

  “I have an idea how it would work,” Ninety-Nine said. “Diamond opened a rift into someplace filled with Light energy. That’s how we became Sparks: Those little flame balls were chunks of the Light, and they powered us up. It took longer to power up the Darklings—they had to marinate in the Light for a couple of hours. But eventually, they were ready. When they came out, they were genuinely super.”

  “But unstable,” Aria said. “They’d gone insane, and as soon as they got jostled, they blew up.” Her eyes narrowed. “Do you think Diamond knew that would happen? Could he have wanted them to explode the moment we hit them?”

  “Probably,” I said. “Think about it. He arranged for his super-Darklings to make their appearance in the middle of a big Darkling event. Super-Darkling explosions would guarantee other Darkling deaths. It would have been even worse if we hadn’t kept the building intact. He could have racked up quite a Darkling body count.”

  “Do you think he’s finished?” Dakini asked.

  “Not a chance,” Ninety-Nine said. “For someone like Diamond, a few dozen corpses is just an appetizer.”

  “He could have easily destroyed the Market,” I said. “He only fired a single rocket. I’m sure he had more.”

  “Yes, Diamond always carries a shitload of weapons,” Ninety-Nine said. “Not just rockets. Heat beams, ice cannons … plenty of ways to kill people.”

  I said, “If the Market was his endgame, he could have leveled it. But he just took a parting shot.”

  “He didn’t want to give himself away,” Aria said. “If he went all out with a dozen different weapons, someone would realize who he was.”

  “Anyway,” Ninety-Nine said, “Diamond can’t be finished yet. The eclipse has barely started.”

  “What do you mean?” Dakini asked.

  “Ask yourself why Diamond came all the way from Australia,” Ninety-Nine said. “Sparks almost never leave their home territories. Not even Mad Geniuses. So what does Waterloo have that Australia doesn’t?”

  “Ahh!” Dakini said. “A lunar eclipse on the winter solstice.”

  “Right,” Ninety-Nine said. “It’s daytime in Australia; no eclipse down there. But Waterloo is in the middle of the eclipse’s maximal region. And until a few hours ago, the city had no Sparks. Perfect place to carry out some scheme tied to the eclipse.”

  Aria checked the time on her phone. “1:56 AM,” she reported. “An hour until totality. That’s presumably when the biggest shit will hit the fan.”

  “We should contact Grandfather,” Dakini said. “Perhaps he can send additional Sparks.”

  “Grandfather has his hands full with that lake monster,” Aria said. “It’s just the sort of threat a Mad Genius would use as a distraction. It draws nearby heroes to Toronto, so they can’t interfere with Waterloo.”

  Ninety-Nine glowed green and said, “Diamond loves creating monsters. Giant rampaging monsters. He breeds ’em by the dozen. Toronto will likely face an escalating series to keep local Sparks busy.”

  Dakini asked, “Does that mean we’re going to face giant monsters?”

  “Likely not,” Ninety-Nine said. “Until tonight, Waterloo didn’t have any Sparks who needed distracting. As for the regular cops, the snow is enough to tie them up. Impassable roads and car crashes—the police are out of the picture.”

  “That leaves us,” Aria said. “So where are we going?”

  “A bed-and-breakfast,” I said. “The Goblin told me where Elaine is staying. She might not be there, but we can search her room for information.”

  “Fight, search, fight, search, fight,” Ninety-Nine said. “How soon before we have to fetch the Mushroom of Truth from the Mines of Despair and take it to the Guild of Wizards?”

  “We’re superheroes,” Aria said, “not World of Warcraft characters. Instead of fetching things, superheroes obliterate the mushroom, cave in the mines, and burn the guild to the ground.”

  “Much better,” said Ninety-Nine. “Allons-y.”

  12

  Active Faults

  SAME FLYING FORMATION AS BEFORE

  Me in Aria’s hair. Dakini and Ninety-Nine riding a sled of psionic energy, yoked to Aria as if she were a husky.

  Aria had no trouble hauling us along at frightening velocity. I couldn’t tell how fast we were flying, but it beat any speed I’d ever experienced in a car (and my dad is a crazy-fast driver). Without protection, we would have been ravaged by wind and snow—flakes aren’t so fluffy when they pummel you at hurricane speeds. But Aria was inside her force field, I was in the same bubble, and Dakini had erected a violet wind deflector in front of the sled. As we flew, she and Aria had a comm-ring debate about what deflector shape would be the most aerodynamic. Dakini experimented with rounded noses, V-shaped cowcatchers, and other designs while Aria kibitzed and Ninety-Nine solved fluid-flow differential equations in her head.

  The thought of Jools voluntarily doing calculus was scarier than flying hell-bat fast through a blizzard. I suddenly realized that Jools now was smarter than me; if she was human-max in everything, that included intelligence. She had joined the lofty ranks of Newton and Einstein.

  I felt weird about that. I didn’t mind if Jools could beat me on raw facts, but if she was actually quicker, brighter, and more astute than I was, it upset the balance between us.

  I was used to being the alpha IQ. If the scales had reversed, and Jools now had the edge, I felt a wall going up inside me. I knew I was being a dirtbag, but there it was.

  «YO, ZIRCON!» ARIA TRANSMITTED, «ARE YOU STILL WITH US?»

  «Sorry,» I said. «Distracted.»

  I was supposed to be navigating. Aria’s sonar made sure that we didn’t hit obstructions, but it couldn’t chart where we were, especially through blinding snow. Even my Spark-o-Vision was hard-pressed to scope out our surroundings. Snow blanketed everything, and drifts hid many landmarks. I could still tell where the streets were—they were the flat swaths of snow lined by stores and houses. But telling one street from another was a challenge. Have you ever tried reading a street sign covered with snow as you whooshed past at ungodly speed?

  At least I knew where I was going. Ninety-Nine had Google Maps built into her brain, and she’d laid out a straight-line course toward our destination.

  The bed-and-breakfast lay in a neighborhood called Black Pine Dale, a part of town I’d never hear
d of. Darkling enclaves were like that: below the radar. Anyone in Waterloo could list the names of upscale neighborhoods—Beechwood, Eastbridge, Belmont Village—but those were only occupied by accountants and upper-middle-managers. People who lived in such districts were doing very nicely, but they would never own their own Learjets.

  Darklings lived in neighborhoods like Black Pine Dale: unknown to us plebes. Black Pine Dale had a single access road whose entrance was lined with modest houses proclaiming, “This street is nothing special.” You had to follow the access road farther, over a rise that shielded the view, and suddenly you were in an old-growth forest area of cul-de-sacs and yards designated as national parks. The homes weren’t tasteless McMansions, but soothing chateaus designed by the best in the business. Think Fallingwater without the mildew.

  The owners didn’t pay for size, they paid for quality and uniqueness. The “One Perfect Rose” school of architecture. So Darkling.

  IN THE HEART OF BLACK PINE DALE LAY THE B&B

  It called itself Red Pine Villa. Yes, Red, not Black, although it was built from chestnut brown bricks with hunter green trim. There had to be a story behind the difference in piney colors, but not a story I’d ever hear. A private joke by the villa’s owner? A feud between the owner and Darkling neighbors over the virtues of red pines versus black ones? Or just a Darkling being contrarian? It was one of those impenetrable mysteries not even Ninety-Nine’s database could explain.

  Red Pine Villa was surrounded by mature pines whose needles held armloads of snow from the blizzard. The trees crowded the house and must have submerged it in gloomy shadows, but I saw the place as bright as a picture in National Geographic.

  The walls radiated a rainbow of energies: dozens of sorcerous wards and defensive enchantments. I couldn’t guess what the spells did, but the implications were obvious; this place was a fortress. Anyone trying to enter unwelcomed—whether by teleportation, walking through walls, or shrinking and creeping through a crack—would suffer extreme consequences. I decided not to find out what those consequences were.