Face the Change (Menopausal Superheroes Book 3)

by Samantha Bryant

  Sally Ann stood and walked to the window, annoyed. That was a lot of effort for not much in the way of results. And she had the same process to follow five more times. And at the end of it, who knew if she’d even learn anything that mattered? Sometimes she thought the whole “having a superpower” thing was overrated. It didn’t seem to help much.

  When she turned back, the Director was sitting at the table. Sally Ann didn’t jump, but it took all of her self-control not to reveal her surprise. “Making any progress?” he asked, using a pencil to poke through the pile.

  “Not really.”

  “Sorry I missed your briefing. I was in another meeting with the mayor. He requires a lot of handholding.”

  Sally Ann nodded, walking over to the coffeepot. It was empty. But the walk gave her a moment to gather her courage. “How do you do it?” she finally asked.

  “It wasn’t that bad.” The Director was laughing, but he stopped when he saw Sally Ann’s stern face. “Ah. Not the politics.” He held her gaze for a long moment, neither of them speaking. Sally Ann let the silence stretch out. Was he going to pretend he didn’t know what she was talking about?

  Finally, he dropped his gaze, speaking to his folded hands on the table. “It’s actually hard not to. It’s something I’ve always been able to do. It’s like breathing.”

  Sally Ann sat atop the table, resting a booted foot in each of two chairs. She tapped the second envelope, still sealed. Archie Matheson’s. “I’m thinking what you can do is kind of like what this guy can do. Maybe it’s time you taught me how to fight it.”

  The Director sighed. “In all my life, there have been a handful of people who were even aware of it, let alone able to resist it. My mother. My sister. You, occasionally. More often lately. And Mary Braeburn.”

  “Mary Braeburn?” That was news to her. She’d known the Director had a soft spot for the fire-wielder’s daughter; now she wondered if this was why.

  “What’s it like from your side? What do you do?”

  “It’s a matter of commitment. Belief. I believe wholeheartedly in what I want you to see or feel.”

  “And when it fails?”

  “I concentrate harder.”

  “But Mary could see through it?”

  He grimaced. “Yes. It still affected her, but she could feel it. Like her doubt was stronger than my belief.”

  “Well, color me skeptical and call me Scully. You up for an experiment?” Sally Ann slapped her hands on her thighs and jumped down to the floor. She locked the door and took a seat opposite the Director. “Show me something.”

  The Director sat there. He looked the same as always to her. Dark haired, with light gray-blue eyes, a square jaw with a cleft in the chin. Handsome enough, she supposed, if you were into the white, rich, frat-boy sort of look. He didn’t speak. Just sat there looking at her. Sally Ann tilted her head and squinted her eyes, concentrating hard. Her head hurt. Her vision seemed to swim.

  She rubbed her eyes. When she looked at him again, she nearly jumped out of her skin. A different man sat across the table from her. A shorter man. Less impressively shouldered. His hair more a muddy brown than the almost-black she was accustomed to, and less of it. His jaw was soft. The cleft in his chin had become a mere dimple. “Director?” she said, the disbelief and surprise making her voice a little shaky.

  He shrugged. “It’s me. Usually, I let people see me the way they want to.”

  “Can you look any way you want?” Sally Ann’s heart beat faster in her chest. As she let her concentration drop, the Director’s face seemed to re-form before her eyes, until he wore the face she’d always known him with again. It was a relief.

  “Not really. I haven’t been very good at selling a change in race or gender. It’s easiest if I stick with a variation on the truth.”

  “Again. Give me all you’ve got.”

  The Director hesitated. “It wasn’t that I meant to deceive you. Like I said, for me, this is as natural as breathing. It’s harder not to do it.”

  “Please.” Sally Ann snorted. “For a spy, you’re a terrible liar. You love it, and you know it.”

  He smiled then, and Sally Ann noticed the Director’s front teeth overlapped a little bit. “Well, maybe you’d better start calling me Steven.”

  “Let’s do this, Steven. I need the practice.”

  Jessica Flies without a Net

  Jessica clung to the ceiling, awaiting her moment. Agent Mike Lester, back in his undercover role of hospital orderly, was supposed to find a pretext to bring Dr. Harvey into the office. Her job was to provide backup and make him talk. Right now, that meant a lot of waiting. She’d already scanned the room for surveillance and didn’t find anything more interesting than a webcam. Just in case, she disabled it.

  Dr. Harvey had a pretty nice office, especially when you considered the crowding situation. Unlike Springfield Women’s where Jessica had received her cancer treatment, or the special Department facility where she’d been treated for her burns, Bethesda showed its age. Shabby and in disrepair, it needed more than a fresh coat of paint. Every square each of space was being utilized to the maximum and beyond. One person’s office might also be the storage room for files. The nurse’s station had been partitioned to make a small break room behind it, crowding the staff to the extent that working around each other was an elaborate dance. Jessica had seen all of that as she moved through the halls making her way to this office.

  The man’s status was clear in that his office was only his office, with no secondary role. Not impressively large by some standards, but the biggest office Jessica had spotted in her reconnoiter. Even the main administrator’s office felt cramped in comparison. The privacy was why Lester had selected the space. Just in case, she had still donned her entire uniform, including the mask. She’d need to get used to working in it, protecting her identity for her family’s sake.

  Voices in the hall grew louder, and Jessica pulled herself into a tight ball, wedged against the ceiling and the wall where she could push off for rapid movement in several directions, but then the voices moved on past. Jessica forced her body to relax. She stretched out to avoid cramping her muscles. Then, the doorknob turned.

  In a flash, Jessica flew across the room and pressed up against a bookshelf beside the door. She’d be behind whoever entered the room and less likely to be noticed if it was the cleaning staff or someone dropping off a file. The position had the added advantage of access to the door, either for a quick exit herself or to keep someone else from using it.

  The door opened, and a short old man, completely bald except for a few stray hairs waving in the air with his movement, entered. He was talking to someone behind him. “Of course I’ll write you a letter, but you’re not really thinking of leaving us, are you? It’s so hard to find trustworthy people these days.”

  Lester entered next, wearing blue hospital scrubs and affecting a slumped-shoulder stance that made him look less physically impressive than Jessica knew he was. “It’s not that I don’t like working here,” he said. “It’s the whole work-life balance thing. A shorter commute would help.” Lester glanced up, making brief eye contact with Jessica before closing the door. He popped in the simple button lock.

  The old man had worked his way around the desk and shuffled around some papers, so there was a place to rest his elbows. Jessica felt bad about threatening the man, but they needed information, so she dropped down behind Dr. Harvey, slipping a gag over his mouth and pulling his hands behind him and fastening them to the chair with the cuffs she had placed there earlier.

  Dr. Harvey pulled only a couple of times before giving up. He turned his head as far as he could, but Jessica stayed behind the chair and out of view. Lester spoke. “I’m sorry, Dr. Harvey, but we’re going to need you to answer some questions.” He leaned forward. “I’ll take off the gag, but if you call out for help, we’ll have to use force, and I don’t want to do that.”

  The doctor nodded, and Lester pulled down the gag.
“What’s this all about? I don’t have any money.”

  “This isn’t a robbery. We’re here to ask about some of your patients.”

  “I can’t tell you about my patients. There are confidentiality laws.” Jessica admired the man’s attempt at bravery, even if it was undercut by the way his voice wobbled.

  Lester leaned forward, the friendly smile he’d been wearing replaced by a steely resolve. He looked dangerous. “Sometimes there are more important things than privacy. We’re here to talk about Agatha Corman and Archie Matheson.”

  Jessica was close enough to feel the sharp intake of the man’s breath. “Have you seen them?” he asked. “Are they all right?”

  “Right enough to walk away with a few hundred thousand dollars’ worth of jewels. Know anything about that?”

  The man sagged in his chair, to the extent his bonds allowed. “I was afraid they’d do something like that. Was anyone hurt?”

  “Not this time.”

  “Thank God.”

  “So, let’s hear it. We know they were both your patients, along with four other missing persons. Are they working for you?”

  “For me?” Dr. Harvey laughed once, a short, bitter sound. “Hardly. If anything, I’ve been working for them.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  On impulse, Jessica came out of hiding and rose into the air and took a turn around the room before landing softly next to the other agent. “Showoff,” Lester whispered.

  “Try us,” she said, ignoring him. “You’d be surprised what we’ll believe.”

  The man’s eyes widened behind the thick lenses of his glasses. “Yes, they were my patients. The Six, we called them. My miracles. All of them suffering brain damage when they came to me.”

  “And when they left?” Michael gestured for Jessica to remove the handcuffs. She did so and clipped them back onto her belt.

  The doctor brought his hands into his lap and rubbed the wrists. “My surgery bypasses damaged parts of the brain, mapping new connections where old ones have been closed off. But there were some unexpected results.”

  “Like psychic abilities?”

  The man rubbed his forehead. “Yes. I never meant for any of this to happen.”

  “We need to find them, Dr. Harvey.” Jessica spoke softly. “We have to stop them before someone gets hurt. Can you help us?”

  The man looked at the door. Jessica came closer. “Anything you can tell us might help, Dr. Harvey.”

  “Agatha is the one you need to watch out for. They all listen to her. They haven’t let me in on their plans, but I hear things sometimes when they come by for their meds. Agatha blames the mayor of Springfield for her troubles. She used to work for the city until she was forced into early retirement because of her health. I think she plans to take over somehow. When she talks about him, she… she’s not reasonable.”

  “They still come in for treatment?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you still treat them.” Mike’s tone had lost its professionalism. Jessica could hear the disgust in it. She shot him a look, but he wasn’t looking at her.

  “I don’t have a choice. Agatha can make you do what she wants.” The man stood up, panic making his hands shake so the papers in his hands rattled. “They’re here,” he blurted. “I can feel her in my head.” Sweat ran down the man’s face.

  “Here in the hospital?” Lester asked. “Where?”

  Dr. Harvey pulled open his desk drawer and grabbed a small gray envelope. He shoved it into Jessica’s hand. “You’ve got to get out of here. This is all I know. Hurry. They’re coming.”

  Jessica tucked the envelope inside her shirt as she flew across the room. Through a small window at the top of the door, she peered down the hall. Two people were walking up the hall. She knew them by sight: Archie and Agatha. “He’s right, Mike. They’re coming. We’ve got to go.” She turned to the doctor. “Is there another way out of here?”

  The man stood perfectly still. His lips trembled like he was trying speak, but no sound came out. Blood dribbled from his nose. This wasn’t good. Jessica threw open the window, guessing she could still move because the people in the hall didn’t yet know she was there and weren’t exerting their influence on her. They needed to remain unseen if they were going to get out of there with the information. “This way. There’s a ledge out here you can use.”

  Lester followed her, climbing out onto the ledge. He worked his way to the end where they both realized he was stuck. There was nothing within reach he could use to climb down, and he weighed more than Jessica could lift. He had to have one hundred fifty pounds on her. If only she had Leonel’s strength combined with her powers of flight. She scanned the ground in front of them, looking for inspiration. “How are you at climbing trees?” she asked.

  “I’m half orangutan,” he said, “but what good does it do me from here?”

  “Give me your hands,” Jessica said. She crouched against the wall, reaching between her own legs to take Agent Lester’s hands in a trapeze hold. “I won’t be able to hold you for long,” she said. “So be ready.”

  Angling her body carefully, she planned a trajectory from their perch on the ledge to the top branches of the nearest large tree below. They needed about fifteen feet outward. She closed her eyes and counted. “One. Two. Three.” And she flew. Mike Lester gripped her arms as hard as she gripped his, swinging beneath her like an anchor, pulling them both down. They fell faster than she’d hoped for but slower than they would have without Jessica’s buoyancy. Jessica’s practice paid off. The landing wasn’t soft. Mike probably bruised some ribs on impact, but he caught a large branch, lowered himself to the ground, and took off running.

  Jessica, still floating above the tree, risked a glance back up at the window they’d climbed out of. Someone stood there, watching. Reflexively, she checked that her mask was in place. Then she saluted and flew over the roof and into the night, already radioing in a rescue effort for the doctor, afraid it was already too late for the old man. Patting the envelope, still secure in her shirt, she turned her body toward downtown and flew faster.

  Cindy’s Deal with the Devil

  Cindy Liu parked the car at the back corner of the restaurant’s parking lot under a tree, backing into the space so the stolen license plate wouldn’t be visible to the casual observer. This was the third car she had boosted in as many days. She was getting good at it, though she wasn’t sure if she should be proud of that or not. It was a survival skill.

  The CSI teams should have an interesting time trying to get anything evidentiary out of the vehicles they had used. She had wiped down all the surfaces and then fumigated each abandoned car with her own creation: a DNA cloud. The samples had been drawn from a gas station bathroom and dispersed throughout the vehicle with a flea fumigation fogger she’d adapted. The techs would be months separating out all the information, and even if her own genetic material were discovered, she’d be long gone by then. Not bad considering she was working out of hotel rooms and stocking her experiments out of supermarkets. She almost wished she could be there to watch them try and figure out what had happened.

  “We’re here,” she said, shaking her father by the arm, harder than necessary. He had nodded off in the seat, like the ninety-year-old man he really was, despite what his physiognomy might indicate. Annoyed with him and apprehensive about walking into this particular lion’s den, she punished him as she could. After all, they were meeting with the very men who had kidnapped her from a bus station a few months ago and delivered her to her father. They tried to spin it as a rescue, but it was still an abduction, and she didn’t trust them. But beggars couldn’t be choosers, no matter how much they wished they could.

  That included choosing your company sometimes. There were very few people in this world with whom Cindy Liu could travel well, and her father was not one of them. Between his apparent helplessness—you’d think the man had never had
to feed himself even once in all his ninety-some years on the planet—and his long, man-splanations on subjects she could have taught a course in, he was lucky she hadn’t killed him again.

  Not only had she not killed him, but she was actually bringing him back, bit by bit, giving him some of her formula in his sleep each night. The progress had been slower with subsequent injections than it had with the first, but the man was undeniably improved. A week ago, he had barely been able to control his own spasming limbs well enough to walk. His nervous system was breaking down rapidly.

  She swelled with pride to observe he could move mostly unaided, though he still clung to that silver-tipped walking stick like some kind of talisman. The risk of using her emeralds was paying out, and, so far, her own condition seemed unchanged. Her formula might have even wider-spread applications than she herself had previously comprehended. The possibilities were exciting.

  While she waited for her father to pull himself out of the car and steady himself with his cane, Cindy examined the restaurant. It was a standard bar-and-grill sort of place, but not one she had heard of. The parking lot full of minivans and station wagons meant the lunch time crowd would probably include lots of families. It would be noisy and chaotic, which probably made it as good a place as any for a clandestine meeting with a semi-retired government agent and his goon.

  This probably wasn’t a good idea, but Cindy knew their options were limited. They needed a place to set up shop, and quickly. She could keep them both stable on the lam, but they couldn’t make any progress this way. And there was progress she wanted to make—had to make.