“Well, we were both afraid — ”
“Bullshit.”
“Excuse me?”
She laughed. “Did I stutter? I remember the report, and you didn’t break through when the overpass pinned your car. You weren’t badly injured, and several minutes went by before you changed. Did you get more afraid? Panic?”
I tried to remember my state of mind back when it happened. “I wanted to...” What?
“May I offer a working hypothesis?” She sat back. “You’d seen lots of disaster-scene news footage where Atlas flew in for the rescue. You needed a rescue, but couldn’t wait for it because others were in danger too. So, you did what you’d seen him do.”
“You think I was a copycat obsessing on him?”
“No, but you did idealize him. Understandable — there was a lot to idealize. My point is that your breakthrough was triggered by the need to help, so it gave you a very helpful and familiar power set. Our boy’s breakthrough the other day was triggered by pain and perfectly natural fear. It gave him the means to strike back hard at the cause, even using something he was familiar with — did you see his school records? Ace chemistry student until last year, did a science fair project on high-energy reactions and lift; he’s a rocket scientist in the making. But the bottom line is his trigger was fear, and fear and anger have similar physiological responses.”
“So, you’re saying Mal can already control his power.”
She frowned thoughtfully, tapping her cup. “Suppress, maybe. When you grow up in an emotionally stressful environment, you learn to keep things in early, and his family obviously has issues. But let’s get back to you and your impulsive promise to help.” I could swear her eyes twinkled. “I know a technique...”
* * *
Seven laughed.
“It’s not funny!” My ears were burning again. I’d fled the breakfast table and Seven found me in the gym ringing the gong, the massive strike-plate I used for a punching bag. All I’d had to say was “Chakra talked to me” for him to go off, which didn’t help. Shelly’s “Seven days to move on Seven” ultimatum wasn’t helping me, either.
“I swear — ” bong “she does it to — ” bong “traumatize me!” bong. Kinetic-to-thermal energy transfer was actually starting to heat the plate. “She makes me want to wave my Saint Agnes medal like a cross for vampires!” Seven just laughed harder, and my worked-up gasping turned into giggles. “Not — ” bong “funny!”
I gave up and leaned against the plate, slid to the floor.
“It’s a little funny,” Seven admitted. He sat down and took the spot beside me.
“What does he want?” I asked, trying to ignore the way our shoulders touched. Since we were off the top of the response queue, I wore spandex spanky pants and an athletic shirt I’d thrown on this morning to sweat in, and I could feel the brush of his Egyptian cotton suit when my bare arm twitched.
Of course, he didn’t notice. “Who?”
“Blackstone. He’s up to something.” I understood Blackstone’s rationale — if we were going to start a new team, someone had to be its familiar face. But putting me in charge? Letting me pick my team? He’d given in on my picks way too easy and was pushing to make it work. Not that I wasn’t grateful, but...
“So, what’s going on?”
He whistled when I told him, then just sat there thinking. Finally he skimmed his hat, took it off, put it back with a little hat-flip and gave me a guileless smile. “Thinking five steps ahead is his job, and I’m pretty sure he’s always up to something. Mind like a snake.”
“You say that like it’s a good thing.”
“Since he’s on the side of the angels, yep.” He climbed to his feet and pulled me up. The stomach-butterflies were back and I sternly ignored them. I didn’t have time for it, and right there, I realized what I had to do about it.
Letting go, he gave me his patented grin. “So, I’m spotting Rush at a neighborhood safety conference this morning. What are you doing?”
“We’re still on alert, so I’m not going to classes, and I’m pretty sure Watchman is going to take advantage. Not like that,” I laughed at his playful look. “But Dr. Beth will probably be checking me out by the time you get back.”
His smile-dimple appeared. “Maybe I shouldn’t leave.”
“That’s sweet. And cheating. Go. I’ll live.” He left, whistling, and I gave myself a moment after the doors closed before going back to the gong.
Megaton
I had no idea what they wanted from me, which sucked because I was finally starting to care.
My second morning started with a text from Tiffany. Just an RUOK?, with a link attached. The link led to a Chicago News story on yesterday’s café shooting. I texted back that it was no big deal, but it was cool that she cared — nobody, and I mean nobody, had bothered until now, and some of the posted responses to the story suggested it would have been better if the shooter hadn’t missed.
Police were still “questioning” the shooter and “pursuing inquiries.”
After breakfast, The Harlequin took me upstairs and introduced me to my case worker, a guy named Allen Nenbauer who gave me his card. He came armed with a briefcase and an agenda that began with a monster questionnaire, and he thought smiling like he’d snorted nitrous oxide was part of the process. It was like watching a grinning ventriloquist’s dummy, but after hours of inane or insane questions and warnings, he let me go with instructions to call him any time “should issues develop.”
All part of being a minor the state wanted to “protect.”
After he finished, The Harlequin returned and took me back down to the living levels to drop me at a door across from the infirmary. When it opened, she gave me a wink and a push before turning and leaving me there. Okay...
The doors closed behind me, making me jump; I still wasn’t used to the way all the doors came from the USS Enterprise.
“You made it.” Across the big room, Watchman broke away from Variforce to step my way. They’d been working out against each other in the center of a red-painted circle on the bare floor.
He shook my hand. “So, are you ready?” He was actually breathing hard. Behind him, Variforce let his origami aura of gold force fields fade and drift until they blended with his black-and-gold spandex bodysuit.
“For what?”
“For us to see what you do.”
My skin tingled and my throat went dry, but I nodded.
“Good.” He slapped my shoulder, waved Variforce over. The other guy, built like a dancer, practically steamed. Breathing deep but not hard, he combed fingers through his short and kinky hair and flipped sweat away.
“Relax, kid,” he said. “We’re not going to blow anything up. Check this.” He held up his arms and waves of gold flowed off him, building layer by layer into a long translucent column stretching away from us along the floor. Spreading his hands widened the column, thickening its rim without hollowing it out.
“Right here.” He pointed to a spot beside him for me to stand. A pushing motion indented the end in front of us until it was deeply concave. Watchman joined us on my other side, and Variforce pulled a few layers of glowing field around himself.
“Okay.” He studied his creation and nodded. “This is just like a shooting-chamber for firing rounds for ballistic tests. The fields aren’t hardened — they’ll absorb the blast through their combined volume, and the room’s sensors are going to measure field density and deformation; that’ll give us an idea of your power’s energy density. Got it? Just point and fire.”
“Got it.” I wiped my hands on my jeans, looked at Watchman, and lifted my arms. Just thinking about it, I felt the heat coming, the pressure building. I braced, leaned in.
Nothing.
“Any time, now,” Variforce said. Watchman shook his head.
Nothing. Embarrassment added to the heat until my skin felt on fire and I thought I’d pop from the pressure in my bones, and nothing. Watchman studied me. “Think about the bus.�
��
That busted it — the heat and pressure dropped away like someone had stuck a tap in me and turned it wide. It all went back wherever it came from, leaving me light-headed and shaking.
He sighed, patting my shoulder. “Sit. Breathe. We’ll try again in a moment, without the bus.” He didn’t have to tell me twice. I dropped to the steel shock-plated floor and he squatted beside me.
“How did it feel?”
I told him. He rubbed his chin, shook his head again. “Well, we’ll try some more.”
Fifteen minutes later, Variforce was getting tired of holding his “shooting chamber” together and I was no closer to anything. Watchman called it a day.
“I almost had it!”
“No, you didn’t — your peak temperature has been dropping for at least five minutes.” An Atlas-type hero, he could watch me in infrared as easily as Astra. “Let’s get a sandwich — you’ve got to be burning calories and I need my strength to go beat somebody up.”
Chapter Eleven: Astra
Sure, superhero costumes are flamboyant acts of self-expression, but they’re useful, too. The PR benefits aside, everyone knows you on sight — important if you need instant trust in a crisis. And recognizing friendlies is deadly important on the fast-moving superhuman battlefield.
The Harlequin, Citywatch Interviews.
* * *
Shelly ignored the red Occupied light, and nearly got decapitated when Watchman cannoned off the wall by the door.
“Bystander handicap!” she announced after ducking. The designated “villain” in this after-lunch fight, Watchman didn’t waste a second — he spun around to go for the grab and I dropped hard to deny him the hostage, but that was the inevitable move so he was ready, turning into my drop with a raised palm-strike that narrowly missed my chin as I twisted aside. Kicking off of the floor at the bottom of the drop, I grabbed his extended arm, spun to put my back to his chest, and curled to throw him hard at the far wall. Yes!
“Go!” Shell gave a fangirl-cheer as I leaped after him. He got control and curved around without meeting the opposite wall, and we smacked together in the center of the Hard Room to wrap up into a clenching, punching, digging midair ball of nasty moves. Too close for fists, I got a knee into his kidney but he rang my head with an elbow under my ear, our hits echoing off the plated walls. Rocked by the elbow-strike, I let him get around me and he took full advantage with a groin-and-neck hold that pointed us in opposite directions and dropped us hard, hammering me face first into the floor. It rang like a gong as my world lit up.
I tried to push off, but my vision refused to clear, I’d lost track of down, and I could barely feel the grinding hold he put me in. Then the pressure went away and the floor rang again as he tapped out for me, calling it.
Enough situation-awareness came back that I could roll over, and a fuzzy blob above me resolved into his face.
He held out his hand, breathing hard. “You okay?”
The vertigo warned me against shaking my head or taking his hand. If I moved, I was going to vomit.
“Nuts,” I finally gasped. He laughed, winced.
Drat. Darn. Nuts. Phooey. My language was ridiculously sanitary — growing up emulating a mom who was Ms. Manners (the truly nice kind, not the stuck-up kind) meant I felt bad about even a mild “dammit,” because “Good manners create respect and are a courtesy to those around you.” It was hard to be taken seriously when “darn it!” popped out under pressure, and when I really needed a colorful word, I had nothing. Thanks, Mom.
When everything steadied, I accepted his hand up.
“You almost had me until Shelly stepped in,” he fibbed politely. “I asked her to, but you made the right move and nearly carried it through.”
“She’d have won if she had her maul,” Shelly defended me.
“Maybe,” he nodded. “But she doesn’t carry it everywhere.”
He’d caught me still in my workout clothes, which had kind of been the point. Blackstone had asked Watchman to focus my training on situations when I didn’t have all the advantages I’d figured out, so I hard-sparred with my personal nemesis in full gear and without.
And he was my nemesis. He’d been recruited to add more muscle and mobility to the team, but also to continue my regular beatings. They called it training, but what Blackstone hadn’t told me was that Watchman’s last assignment had been as a fight instructor at Fort Hood in Texas — where he’d trained supersoldiers for special Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine units.
That’s right; he’d trained superSEALs, superRangers, and other insanely lethal gods of war. His motto was “Training should be tougher than combat”; he’d gotten the scar that ran from his eye to his jaw in a training exercise, and now he got to focus on me. Oh, joyous day.
I wanted to score a real win off of him so bad I could taste it like the blood in my mouth (Somewhere in the fight, I’d bitten my cheek.). I grabbed a towel to mop the sweat.
“You’re really getting better,” Shelly said loyally, handing us the bottles she’d brought with her. “At least you’re lasting longer...”
“And I feel it. Ghah!” I stretched, flexed my neck, and felt something pop back into place. Watchman politely accepted his and took a drink, then reset the room’s function. The variable-mass weight machines Vulcan had designed and fabricated for us rose from the floor and he began doing shoulder presses.
I considered joining him, but I’d had enough. Finishing the stretch, I started doing yoga postures while Shelly watched; Chakra had started me on yoga when she introduced us to the mental tricks that might help us detect telepathic manipulation, and training against my own body’s resistance made sense and was even fun. I lingered a bit five moves into the routine, poised on my left foot, right leg straight out parallel to the floor and toes pointed at the ceiling, bent forward with arms extended along my leg, fingers interlaced as a saddle for my right foot, forehead resting on my knee.
“Now you’re just showing off. What is that even called?”
“Dandanayama-janushirasana.”
“Bless you.” She fidgeted, and I smiled against my leg where she couldn’t see. Should I ask Watchman how his session with Mal had gone?
“So, Seven?”
Okay, maybe Mal wasn’t the one on her mind.
“To quote Jacky, ‘Bite me.’” Cutting the routine short, I dropped into toe-stand position, balanced on the toes of my right foot so my butt rested on my heel instead of the floor, left leg folded over so my left foot rested on my right thigh in lotus position, hands in prayer position above my heart, eyes closed and breathing controlled. Since I hardly felt my own weight, I could keep it up as long as I maintained my balance (but staying up by “flying” was cheating).
“So, how long are you going to do that?”
“Shhh.”
“Seriously.”
“Waiting is all.”
“You know Chakra was quoting a science fiction character, don’t you?”
I kept my eyes closed, but couldn’t hide the grin. “Wisdom is where you find it, Sifu says. You gave me a week, Shell, now leave it alone.” I wasn’t about to tell her my Seven resolution; waiting would drive her crazy.
Not that she’d have to wait long; enough was enough. Last night, I’d woken from a courtroom dream that started with Dan Raffles asking me to describe the events of May 25th and ended with the defense attorney asking my opinion of Seven’s hazel eyes. And may I remind the witness that she is under oath? Judge Sanderson overruled Dan’s objection — that my opinion of the defendant’s eyes would be prejudicial to the jury — and my horror as my mouth started to open rocketed me out of bed. Literally.
I wasn’t twelve anymore, I had things to do, and it was time to get proactive; the next time Blackstone sent Seven and me out in the field together...
Shelly huffed. “So then — ” The lights dimmed, came back up shaded Emergency Red, and her eyes unfocused. “Crap. Blackstone’s calling. Something’s going down at the Daley
Center.”
I fell out of position.
Megaton
Failure tastes like acid, the bile at the back of your throat when you think you’re going to toss your cookies. So lunch sucked. After Watchman and Variforce left me in the dining room with some encouraging words, I tried to slouch back to my rooms.
This ride blows. I want my money back.
Instead Willis found me — The Harlequin had summoned me back upstairs, this time to her office.
The idea of superheroes having offices was just ... wrong. Headquarters and briefing rooms and high-tech workout and training rooms? Yeah. But, offices? Rooms where you read reports and sign stuff? It turned out that hers was on a balcony level open to the City Room, so she could step out and watch Dispatch as it coordinated the patrols and responses of all the CAI teams in Chicago.
I’d seen the City Room before on a grade-school tour, part of the Dome Experience not available since Villains Inc.’s attack on the place last spring; now, visitors had to stick to the atrium, museum, theater and gift-shop. I took the stairs up to her office two steps at a time, wondering what she could want with me.
The Harlequin’s office was as colorful as her costumes, walls covered by Cirque du Soleil show posters. She looked up and smiled when I knocked on her open door, and the big guy with her stood up when I came in. He was taller than me, wide shoulders and all lean muscle.
He looked me over and nodded. “I can work with this.”
I looked back, feeling myself heat up. “Work with what?”
The Harlequin rolled her eyes. “Andrew, play nice. Sit, both of you.”
He laughed and handed me a large epad — the kind that could display whole magazine or comic-book pages in bright color. It showed me, front and back in ink and color, wearing a short, zipped-up red leather jacket with black shoulders and trim over a black high-necked shirt and cargo pants. I also wore combat boots, gloves, and a utility belt with the Sentinels “S”-logo. An asymmetrical explosive starburst decorated the back of the jacket. He gave me a moment to absorb the picture, then leaned forward and tapped the screen to drop a dark visored half-helmet on the figure. He’d written Megaton under the costume sketches.
Young Sentinels (Wearing the Cape) Page 8