A good thing about all this rebuilding in the city is it gave me a chance to plant bugs just about everywhere. The software in the car sifts through everything to locate key phrases or sounds that could mean trouble. All I need to do is wait for something to turn up. It won’t be long with how bad the streets have gotten since first Clownface and then Omega trashed the city.
A screen lights up on the dash. The sounds are muffled, but I can make out a girl’s whimper and the thuds I know all too well as punches. From the GPS coordinates, the girl is only two blocks away.
I slip the Audi into drive and then floor the accelerator. The car will never be as fast as Velocity Man or Velocity Gal, but as far as machines go it can take anything on the road today. I streak down the road to Burton Street, not far from the docks. It’s not the kind of place an unescorted girl should be after dark unless she’s carrying her own personal arsenal.
My ears didn’t betray me. In the car’s blue headlights I see three more beefy guys surrounding a teenage girl in a ragged gray jumpsuit. I should jump out of the car, but I hesitate. She looks so much like Melanie that I waste precious seconds gaping.
When one of the goons pulls out a gun, he snaps me back to reality. He fires a full clip into the Audi, but every inch of the car has the latest in bulletproofing technology. All his shots do is ping harmlessly off the windshield.
I wait for him to finish before I get out of the car. I wish it had some fancy stuff like machine guns or rocket launchers, but I designed it as a reconnaissance vehicle, not a tank. The tank is back in the bunker with the rest of my stuff.
“You’re a little late to take her lunch money,” I say.
“Get lost, kid, or you’re next.”
“I at least need your insurance information after you shot up my car.”
The talking is to buy time while I size them up. Three sides of beef will be more difficult to take down than Randazzo—also a lot more fun. Before they can react, I make my first move. A new toy I came up with is a shuriken launcher on the top of my left hand. All I have to do is twitch my index finger and a poison-tipped shuriken embeds itself in a punk’s chest. I could have used it on Randazzo but those shurikens are expensive, especially the poison that comes all the way from the jungle in Thailand.
On my right hand is my Taser. It’s not as expensive, but it needs time to recharge, so I like to use it sparingly. The charge is enough to put down the guy on my right, leaving one more to go. I drop into a slide to go beneath his clumsy haymaker. I use the same technique countless other women have throughout history: I punch him in the balls as hard as I can. While he’s doubled over, I tie his hands.
Then I hear a familiar click behind me. From long experience I know it’s the safety being taken off a gun. The girl says in a voice almost like Melanie’s, “Strip. All the way down to your undies. Do it or I put a hole in your head.”
“I’m not going to hurt you, kid—”
“Do it!”
From this range there’s no way she can miss, so I don’t have a choice. I let the cape slip off first. Then comes my utility belt. The shuriken launcher and Taser on either hand go next. “Hurry it up,” the girl says.
“I’m trying not to make any sudden moves.”
“You’re hoping I lose my nerve or someone comes along to save you, maybe one of your Super Buddies. It’s not going to happen.”
I was hoping for the former. As for the latter, the Super Squad and Auxiliary have better things to worry about, as do the police. I’m on my own unless some helpful stranger shows up, which isn’t likely at two in the morning in this part of the city.
Before much longer I’m down to my boots and mask. I turn around to face the girl. I hope to see her hands shaking or tears in her eyes, but the gun is steady and her eyes clear. Those eyes have the hardened look of a killer. A professional turned into a teenage girl by Dr. Roboto’s weapon? Probably.
“I don’t know who you are, but I saved your life.”
The girl laughs. “Like I couldn’t have taken them.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Bait for the trap.”
“Who sent you? One of the families?”
“No one sent me. Now take off the mask.”
“If you insist.” I touch the side of the mask. It flies off into the face of the girl thanks to the spring-mounted system I rigged up. The mask doesn’t have any sharp or poisoned edges; it’s just a distraction.
The girl may be a professional, but her flinch at the mask gives me the opening I need to bat the gun away. Before she can grab me, I spin towards her and drive my elbow hard into her solar plexus. That knocks the wind out of her. She swats at me ineffectually while I grab one wrist to spin her to the ground.
As I try to fetch a weapon, she trips me up with a gangly leg. She gets up faster than I would have thought possible for a kid her age. The defensive pose she strikes indicates she has had professional training.
Fighting her is like when Melanie and I spar in the bunker, something that hasn’t happened in a while, not since Melanie got her own team and that job with the UN. It feels good to be able to use all these moves I’ve learned and practiced. Whoever this girl is, she’s a worthy opponent.
I turn aside a kick only to get a punch in the midsection. For the first time I start to wonder if I’ll win this fight. It’s obvious she’s really good and unlike me she hasn’t been sitting behind a desk for most of the last year. How could I let myself get so soft? And how could I compound that by walking into a trap?
Arrogance, sheer arrogance. I thought I was invincible. I should know better. Starla is the invincible one. I’m the one who uses her brain not to get into these situations. I need to use that brain now to figure out how I can win this.
The girl is a really good fighter, better than Melanie when we spar because Melanie always holds back, no matter how many times I tell her not to. This kid isn’t holding back at all. If anything she’s trying too hard. I could wear her out if my own stamina weren’t degraded from all that rust.
There’s one other difference between her and Melanie: she hasn’t grown into her body yet. She’s close to six feet tall, but she probably weighs one-ten at most. Part of it might be a lousy diet, which is common enough these days. The rest is simply that she’s still going through puberty.
Those long limbs give her good range, but too much range can be a bad thing sometimes. All I need to do is get in close, where those lanky arms won’t be as effective. I bite down on my lip, knowing this is going to hurt. No pain, no gain, as they say.
It’s not as much fun getting punched in the face this time. She doesn’t have nearly as much power as Randazzo, but she has a better idea how to use it. I’ll need to ask Jasmine to schedule a dentist’s appointment this week.
In the meantime, I get in under her follow-up punch. With a shout I push her back against a wall. Since I’m so close in, it’s easy for me to use my weight to drive her and keep her pinned while she has a much harder time trying to extricate herself.
I work her midsection until she spits up blood. One punch to the jaw and she’s KO’d. I stand aside to let the girl droop to her knees and then onto her side. She struggles to breathe for a few minutes. Some more of her blood ends up on the ground.
“Where’d you learn to fight like that, kid?” I ask. I fetch my belt for a set of zip ties. She’s too weak to put up a fight as I handcuff her.
“Special Forces,” she says.
“That figures. Which one were you in: Green Berets, Rangers, Delta Force—”
“SEALs.”
“That’s a good outfit. The obvious question is: why haven’t you made yourself a grown-up again? You one of those weirdos who wants a second childhood?”
She laughs. It’s a bitter, defeated laugh. I can’t blame her. “I like being anonymous. No one looks twice at a girl like me.”
“Yeah? So what is all this? Did the government send you after me?”
“No.”
“No one.”
“Who are you?”
“Nobody.”
“I thought you soldiers usually gave your name and serial number under interrogation.”
“You want my name? I’ll give it to you: Jessica Frances Murphy. But it used to be Jessica Frances Howe.”
I study the girl’s face. She’s right that no one looks at a kid like her too closely. She’s not pretty enough for horny guys to pay attention to. That gave her a lot of practice at being invisible. But when I rack my brain, I remember her in her bedroom, writing in a diary like a lot of kids her age did before everyone had iPhones and Facebook. Like all the boys at her school, I’d ignored her; I hadn’t gone there to see her.
“You’re Jake Howe’s little girl, aren’t you?”
“Don’t you say his name. You murdering son of a bitch.” For the first time she starts to thrash against the zip ties. She probably knows as well as I do it won’t do her any good. “I don’t know how you survived the last time, but I swear this time I’ll make sure you stay dead.”
“You’re the one who killed the impostor in Focal City. I should thank you for that.”
“Impostor?”
“A clone your friends in the army made of me. She’s the one who got the ball rolling on all that shit a year ago. She switched places with me so she could turn on the sex-changing weapon.”
“You’re lying!”
“They were on the news about four years ago. The male Super Squad that reappeared the time all those robots showed up?”
“But that Midnight Spectre was a man.”
“He got zapped with a portable version of the sex-changing ray—by me. She was locked up in the loony bin after that. Until she escaped.”
“I don’t believe you,” she says, but there’s an uncertain quiver in her voice.
“You think I made all that up? I’m not that good of a storyteller.” I kneel down to look her in the eye. “I didn’t kill your father. I’m very sorry about it. He was a good man.”
“Shut up!”
“I’m not your enemy, Jessica. If you think it over, you’ll realize it too. That fucking clone played us all. The way I see it, she got what she had coming.”
I’m a little surprised when she starts to cry. It doesn’t make her look any prettier. “No, that can’t be true. You’re lying.”
“You know that’s not true. But if you want, I can show you the records.”
“Forgeries.”
“All right, fine, I’ve tried. You can wait here with these boys for the police. If they let you go and you want to do this dance again, fine with me. Helps me keep in shape.”
I turn and start to walk away. It’s not a ploy like someone hoping for a better deal on a used car. I’ve done all I can to convince the girl. If she doesn’t want to believe me, then the hell with it.
“Wait! Don’t leave me here. Please.”
I turn around. Tears are dribbling down her cheeks. She looks so pathetic, like Melanie when she was still a nerdy teenage boy. I stepped in to help him and it changed both of our lives—mostly for the better. “You ready to believe me?”
“I…I guess.”
“Now you sound like a normal kid.”
I go over to take the zip ties off, careful to stay at arm’s length in case this is all a ploy. But even after I free her hands, she sits on the ground, stringy hair covering most of her face. Through all that dirty hair she says, “What the hell am I supposed to do now?”
“If you want, I’ll take you to a processing center. You can be an adult again by lunchtime. Then I suppose you can contact the Pentagon—”
“I don’t want to go back there. Not ever.”
“Then do whatever you want. It’s a big country. Lots of places for a girl to hide these days.”
“What’s the point? What’s the point of anything now? Daddy was all I had left—”
“Your mom’s still alive. And your sisters.”
“Mom and I never got along. I was always the black sheep.”
“I’m sure you can think of something.”
“Ever since he died, all I thought about was killing you. Now I don’t even have that.”
“Listen, Jessica, I’ve been where you are now. When I first started out as Midnight Spectre, all I wanted was to get even with the world for taking my parents from me. But it was never enough. In time it consumed my whole life.”
“What stopped it?”
“A boy. A boy who became a girl. She taught me what it was like to live again.”
“So why are you out here in a cape and tights then?”
“Because the job still needs done, especially now. But thanks to her, I’ve learned balance. I’m sure in time you’ll figure that out too.”
“Maybe I can find Jesus when I’m in juvie.”
“I’m not going to take you in. Not unless you really want me to.”
It’s a risk to let her go, but I’m pretty sure she’s learned her lesson. Still, I’m careful when I untie her hands not to get in too close. She glares at me for a minute before she sits up against the wall. Another round of tears begins.
“If you want, I can drop you off somewhere. Your mom’s house maybe?”
“I don’t want to go back there.”
“Then wherever you’ve been staying—”
“I’ve been staying under a bridge for three weeks.”
I know I’m being stupid even as I blurt out, “If you really need a place to stay, I’ve got plenty of room. You’re welcome to flop there until you get things sorted out.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Fine, if you’d rather sleep in garbage than on a king-size bed, who am I to argue?”
I turn away to start collecting the rest of my gear. I’ve got the last of it when she says, “A real bed wouldn’t be so bad. If you’ve got room.”
“I’ve got about forty rooms. You can have whatever one you want.”
“You really are Robin Holloway then, aren’t you? When I saw your picture in the papers I thought it was you. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, you’ve got everything. Why do this?”
“Because someone has to. But at the moment I happen to have an opening for a sidekick. Maybe you’d know a girl with top-notch martial arts skills who’d be available?”
“I might,” she says. She smiles shyly at me. I hope this is the start of a beautiful friendship.
Hitter #1:
Personal Business
Over the better part of two decades as an assassin I’ve taken out hundreds of people. They weren’t all scum, but they were at least scummy enough to make an enemy who would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to eliminate them. Another one shouldn’t make a difference.
Except this time along with my silenced pistol, sniper rifle, and garrote I’m carrying a badge. A tacky piece of gold-painted tin accompanied by a bad picture that identifies me as Major Diane Giordano of the Global Autonomous Intelligence Agency or GAIA for short. The whole thing still makes me nauseous whenever I think about it.
It wasn’t my intention to get mixed up in another of Melanie Amis’s naïve crusades to save the world. But with most of the world still in ruins, career options are limited, especially for someone whose skill set is limited to knowing a dozen ways to kill someone with my thumb. I keep saying in time I’ll go back to school to work on getting a teacher’s certificate, to make myself legitimate.
For now I’m working for an agency that operates out of the basement of an old UNICEF administration building in Atomic City. Our whole active roster consists of four people; lucky me I rank second-in-command ahead of the secretary and a cavewoman whose IQ is less than her shoe size. I even rate an office, not that I spend much time in it.
It was two days ago when “the general” called me into her office, which is about the size of the washroom for my flat. Like my rank, Melanie’s is arbitrary; she has never even been to military school. Since she’s in the
office she’s not wearing her ridiculous new uniform, just a powder blue suit that goes with the snappy beret hanging on the coat rack.
Even after nine months Melanie isn’t used to being the head of a spy agency. She shifts nervously in her chair as if the thing might electrocute her at any second. “Would you like any coffee or tea? There’s water too.”
“I’m fine. Who’s causing trouble this time?”
The pile of folders on her desk would be up to my waist if she put it on the floor. She reaches into the pile to pull one out. “His name is Max Carmichael. Word is he’s been starting up some criminal enterprises in London: drugs, guns, and so forth. I’d like you to go check it out.”
I hope the surprise didn’t register on my face when she said Max’s name. It’s my turn to shift uncomfortably in my chair. “Why didn’t you pass this on to your friends? Apex Girl could pull him out of there in an instant, yeah?”
“We’re not sure where he’s at. I’d prefer to do this quietly. That’s not really Starla’s forte.” Her face turns red when she drops the other shoe on my head. “From Interpol’s records it seems one of his old associates is Darrien Giordano. Is that true?”
“Yeah. Back in the old days he was like my agent. He set up most of my jobs. Kind of like you.”
The comparison makes her blush even redder, which was the intent. “I’ll understand if you don’t want to do this. I thought perhaps since you know him, you could get him to come back peacefully.”
“That might be a problem. Maxwell’s never much liked coppers. He is still Maxwell, yeah? Not Maxine or something?”
“No, our intelligence indicates he got changed back, though someone with his criminal record shouldn’t have qualified.”
“Fake IDs were another specialty of his.”
“We’re not sure exactly what he looks like after the change—”
“I’ll be able to recognize him.”
“So you’ll do it? I can assign it to someone else—”
“Who, Garlak? Your mother?”
“There are other agencies—”
“None of them know him like I do.” I stand and then snatch the folder from her desk. “I’ll take care of it, love.”
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