Divina smiled at this.
Coop smiled back and hugged her close to him. He hoped he told her the truth. But he knew in his heart, he hadn’t. His life wasn’t one where he could keep her safe. But it was one where he could find the bastards that sent her after him. A world where he could make them pay for what they did.
He knew, one way or another, he would find them and kill them all.
-~o~-
Nicholas Ahlhelm is the author of several novels set in his own Quadrant Universe. His work can be found in multiple novels in the Lightweight series as well as such titles as Epsilon and A Dangerous Place to Live. His short fiction has appeared in anthologies for Airship 27, Flinch Books, Metahuman Press and Pro Se Productions. He lives in Eastern Iowa with his wife and two daughters. He invites everyone to visit him at http://www.superpoweredfiction.com .
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Next of Kin
Frank Byrns
He stood outside with the rest of them.
Stood outside, and waited.
Earlier today, he heard one of the television reporters say that the crowds had come from all over the world, hoping that he was one of the out-of-town visitors. Of course, once the reporters discovered that he was a local, all his life spent here in the city, they moved on to mourners from more exotic locales, like Pittsburgh, or Omaha.
There was even, he heard, a family of four all the way from New Zealand.
From all over the world, thousands of them, bringing candles, flowers, banners. Teddy bears. A group of fraternity brothers had driven up from Florida, their hands clutching dog-eared copies of the topless photo spread she had done for a magazine last spring.
What a stupid fight that had been, looking back on it now. “You only make it worse when you make a big deal about it, Dad,” Jessie said then, sounding so much like her mother it made his heart ache. “They’re only boobs.”
He didn’t buy it. (Her magazine, or her argument.) They didn’t speak for a week after that, and then the whole thing erupted again when she sent him an invitation to the magazine’s premiere at some trendy club down on the waterfront. Sent it by courier, no less. Needless to say, he hadn’t gone . . . what kind of father wants to see life-sized topless photos of his only daughter plastered all over the walls of some bar?
His no-show to the event left it her turn to be mad. “Why can’t you be more supportive?” she said.
But she didn’t stay mad long. Neither did he. They never did.
The magazine had been a phenomenal success, selling out across the country. It had done wonders for her profile, as well, firmly entrenching her as one of the most visible superheroes in the country, if not the world. Which, he supposed, had sort of been the point.
The offers poured in. Movie roles. Book deals.
Professional invitations, too; there was talk of joining The Order. The Arsenal, maybe.
But he was afraid that she’d raised her profile too much, particularly among the metacriminal element. Every one of them, he feared, would want to come to town and take a shot at the media’s newest darling.
His little girl.
“You can’t protect me forever, Daddy,” she said. “Don’t worry . . . I’m tougher than I look.”
Don’t worry.
Of course she was tougher than she looked. He had seen her go toe to toe with some of the meanest and baddest around. She had taken some licks, but she had given out a lot more.
But still.
She was his little girl.
He was right, though. They showed up in droves, eager to make a bigger name for themselves by toppling the next big thing. Hysteria. Undertow. Hollywood and The Vine. They all showed up to take down his girl, and they all failed.
She even got into it with a few of her peers on the side of angels, some of the more morally rigid among them. Old Glory called her an embarrassment to the profession. Crusader called the photos an “abomination before God’s eyes.” She punched that old holy roller square in the mouth for that one.
Her daddy couldn’t help but be proud when he saw a reply of that on the Fox-5 evening news.
Smiling at the memory, he watched a group of teens to his right holding hands in a circle, a youth group from a church across the river. Most of the girls in the group weren’t much older than Jessie was the only other time she had spent the night in this hospital.
He had fallen asleep in his chair on that night some years ago, watching a late night Pioneers ballgame from the west coast. Jessie had gone upstate with her travel team for a weekend tournament, and he had the house to himself for the night. He had wanted to go and root on his daughter and her teammates, but was just too exhausted from a week of double shifts at the plant. The phone rang about eleven o’clock, rousing him. Coach Lopez was on the other end of the line, calling to say that Jessie was fine, not to worry, but she had taken a line drive off her chest while playing third base, just above the heart. Everything was fine, she said, but they were just taking her over to the hospital for some x-rays, just to be sure.
By the time he got there ninety minutes later, their precautionary concern had given way to something else; her chest showed not even the slightest bruise, despite Coach Lopez’ claim that she had never in all her years of coaching seen a ball hit any harder. The doctors insisted on keeping her overnight for observation just to be sure, but there was nothing the next morning, either. Only the first sign that there was something special about his girl.
He had been in the same position in the same chair two nights ago, asleep with the remote in his hand after a Pioneers game in San Diego. But it wasn’t the phone that woke him this time, but the post-game news on Fox-5, headlined by a live report from Midtown as Blue Diamond battled for her very life in a wild brawl with a new villain calling himself Borazon.
Blue Diamond absorbed blow after blow that she would have normally shrugged off, each one more punishing than the last. Try as she might, Blue Diamond just couldn’t stop Borazon’s onslaught, and was beaten literally within an inch of her life. It took the arrival of Oceanna and Destiny, on patrol in the area, to stop the brutality, as Borazon chose to flee into the night, outnumbered as he was by two of The Order’s Seven Pillars of Freedom.
A police report obtained by The Observer this morning painted a picture of Borazon as a career petty criminal, one of the mad scientist types. The modified battle suit he wore had been lifted a week prior in a daring raid on Vincorp Labs; he had handled the mods himself, lacing the gauntlets and armor plating with borazon, one of the handful of known substances in the world capable of cutting through diamonds. The report included a profile whipped up by the Correctional Department shrinks up at Dobbs Farm on this new mechahuman; they believed he had modified the suit for the sole purpose of taking down Blue Diamond. What better way, they said, for a three-time loser to make a name for himself than to take down the nation’s new favorite hero?
Superion and the rest of The Order vowed publicly to find Borazon and bring him to swift justice for what he had done. There had even been promises made from DC, as the Metahuman Affairs Division announced that The Arsenal would get involved with the manhunt. It was a rare foray for their team into street-level crime, but not so rare to see them make a grab for some good PR.
After all that, he was confident Borazon would be apprehended and dealt with to the fullest extent of the law. But didn’t care about that right now.
Right now, all he wanted was to hold his little girl’s hand.
He glanced up at a seventh story window, a corner room in which he pictured Jessie lying comatose, fighting for her life. He had no idea which room she was in, but had convinced himself that that was the one. It gave him something to focus on.
The blowhards on the 24-hour cable news channels had already started in on the presumed high cost of Blue Diamond’s medical care. He caught a peek at them when he ducked into the diner across the street from the hospital for a quick egg sandwich and coffee that morning. One of the
gasbags was arguing that taxpayers should not be expected to foot the bill for a person injured in an act of vigilantism, which is technically a crime. A crime on which most officials in this city are willing to turn a blind eye, but a crime nonetheless. His opposite number held that for all that times that Blue Diamond and others like her had saved this city from certain disaster, providing her with basic health care was the least that the people could do in return.
Disgusted, he tossed the other half of his sandwich uneaten into the trash, unable to finish. Seeing your daughter turned into a public policy debate issue was enough to kill any man’s appetite.
He couldn’t help but wonder, though, just who was going to pay for it. Jessie had never been good with money. To be so good at any and everything else that she had ever tried in her life, her personal finances were almost comical. He had done her taxes every year since her first summer job at age sixteen, so while he knew her research position at the university paid her a decent wage—more than he’d ever pulled down at the plant—he wasn’t sure if their health plan covered incidents like this. Moreover, the health plan was Jessie’s; these bills would go to Blue Diamond.
If there was anything he could do, he would. His pension, a second mortgage, rob a bank at gunpoint . . . he’d do anything. But more than that, beyond the money, beyond anything, he just wanted to hold his little girl’s hand.
It was all he could do to just stand there in the street, and not rush into the hospital to be by her side. But what would he say? How would he get her room number? How could he prove she was his daughter? How would he get past the heavy security? How could he do any of that without revealing her most precious secret?
On the first night she put on the mask, Jessie made him promise. That no matter what happened, he could not tell anyone that the young woman under Blue Diamond’s cowl was his daughter. “You have to promise, Daddy,” she said. “You can’t come rushing in at the first sign of trouble. There’s too much at stake . . . my personal life, my friends. My family. You. You can’t protect me forever.”
So he promised.
He glanced down at the heavy watch strapped to his wrist. The watch was a gift from Jessie last Father’s Day, paid for with money from the photo shoot, without a doubt the nicest thing he had ever owned. He felt like a schmuck whenever he wore it. But he liked Jessie’s smile when she saw him wearing it, and he knew that it made her happy to have been able to buy it for him. So he wore it all the time.
12:30. It had been forty-eight hours since he had awoken in his chair to the most crushing news of his life. The last public statement from the medical team inside had reported no changes. No improvements, which was troublesome, but no downturns in her condition, either, which was good. The next twenty-four hours would tell the tale.
He looked back up at the seventh floor window, then above, tracking upwards to the roof of the hospital, where Hotshot maintained his silent vigil. He wondered if there was something going on between his daughter and The Order’s handsome young hero. She had always been so secretive with her love life. That was probably a good thing for him when she was a teenager. But now, he just wanted her to be happy. He would have to ask her about Hotshot if she . . . No.
Not if. He wouldn’t think that way. He’d ask her soon.
He remembered Jessie’s growth spurts, starting not too long after her softball “injury.” They were painful months, long months where she lay in her bed at night crying because of the pain in her legs. “There’s really nothing we can do,” the doctor had said, a referral from Jessie’s pediatrician that specialized in metaphysiology. “It’s painful for her, obviously, and painful for you to watch her go through it. But she’ll get through it . . . they always do. And she’ll be stronger for it.”
He would give it until the morning. If her condition didn’t improve, he was going inside, tell them who he was. Whose father he was.
Promises be damned.
But that was tomorrow.
Tonight, he would stand outside with the rest, and wait.
* * *
They woke her up at five AM. Again.
Not that she’d been sleeping all that well in the first place. But that just made it worse. When she tossed and turned half the night before finally drifting off just before three . . . well, that just made it worse.
She had always been an early riser. Early to bed, early to rise, a product of her upbringing on a South Carolina tobacco farm. If the sun was up and she wasn’t, she had better be deathly ill, or her mama would make her wish that she was. And when the sun went down, she followed soon after; she could count on one hand the number of times she’d made it past halftime of Monday Night Football.
When Martin was a boy, she was still up every morning with the sun, without an alarm clock. Pressing his clothes, cooking up a hearty breakfast, shuffling him out the door to the bus before seven. Then it was off to work, then back home again to meet the bus. She’d help him with his homework; afterwards, he’d watch cartoons while she cooked their dinner. Then she’d put him in the tub, and sit there by his side as he told her all about his day. Those nights in their small bathroom were some of her favorite memories of her son, and many times his skin would prune before he finished the day’s recap. But however long it took, it was never enough.
There was never enough time.
“I love you, Mommy,” he said every night as she pulled his officially licensed Blue Streak bedspread up to his chin, just the way he liked it.
“I love you, too, baby.”
“You think Aaron’s mommy loves him?” he asked one night. Aaron was the class bully, a smart-mouthed, genuinely mean kid who for two weeks that fall had been the terror of Martin’s life.
“Of course she does . . . he’s her baby,” she said, kissing Martin’s forehead, thinking of something her own mother had said to her years before. “Everybody’s somebody’s baby.”
The doctors said that she would sleep better eventually, that it would just be a matter of time. The minister promised the same, that eventually the restless nights would give way to something else. It was frustrating. On the farm, she had gone to bed every night bone tired, and slept through the night without fail, waking up with the sun the next morning rested and ready to do it all over again. But after all her years here, she feared that city living had made her soft; even before last week, she had never slept as well here as she had back on the farm. It was never completely quiet in the city, never completely still; she had never been completely comfortable.
But still, she had slept. Now, though . . . now, she was lucky to be asleep by three. And when the news trucks that lined her narrow street fired up their generators every morning at five so that they could go live in time for the six o’clock morning news . . . she didn’t need an alarm clock now, either.
She had been on the phone with her sister Dinah the night before. They had shared a remorseful laugh at the picture that The Observer had run with their feature article on Sunday, Martin in his high school cap and gown. Lord knows where they had gotten that one. He had looked so young and sweet in that photo, posed just so, every bit somebody’s baby.
Of course, Martin hadn’t made it to graduation; he had been expelled in the three weeks between the picture being taken and the ceremony. She went to the gym that night anyway, clapping with the rest of the mothers, weathering their pity and scorn with a smile.
She wasn’t sure how Martin had spent what should have been his graduation night. Probably somewhere with Aaron, who had been a bad influence for a long time. But she wasn’t sure; Martin had left home two nights before, and she hadn’t spoken to him since.
She made her way downstairs to the sitting room. Using her index finger, she pushed down one slat of the Venetian blinds hanging from the front window and peeked outside, setting off a minor frenzy. Reporters rushed the window, their microphones leading the way like bayonets. “Ms. Stevenson, if we could just get a word about—”
She snapped the blinds shut, clos
ing off the vultures outside. She had just wanted to see if they were all still there. They were, all five local channels, plus the big three cable news networks. It had been three days; she would have thought that at least one of the nationals would be gone by now, moved on to the next story. But they were all still there; waiting, it seemed, for her.
She padded through the living room back towards the kitchen, her thick slippers the only sound in the house. It was quieter here, in the back of the house, the noise from the generators barely audible. Maybe she should try sleeping on the kitchen floor. It couldn’t get any worse.
The ladies from her Circle at church had brought over casseroles of every conceivable variety. The refrigerator was full of them, and she had to poke around a minute to find her pack of bacon. She hated other people in her kitchen, the way that they meant well, but just couldn’t put things back where they belonged. Her cabinets and fridge were a clean, orderly disaster. She’d be glad when this was all over and everyone went back home and stayed there.
Another wave of remorse washed over her as she dropped a few strips of bacon into the warming pan. She shook her head slowly, embarrassed, wishing that she had been surprised when she found out that Martin was dead. Viewed through the distance of a few days, she was still disappointed in the nonchalance that she had shown to those police officers standing on her front stoop, their hats in their hands.
“OK,” she had said. The younger of the two cops had walked her through all the particulars of her only son’s particularly violent death, and her reaction had simply been, OK.
Embarrassed, disappointed; but not surprised.
She had never understood those other mothers she saw on TV, the ones with sons (or daughters) in the same line of work as Martin. “I just never thought that my baby could get mixed up in something like this,” they always said. “He was such a sweet boy. Never in all my years could I even imagine.” She envied those mothers’ innocence. Their naiveté. Their faith.
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