“Most of them,” she said.
“You may be able to bring your shadow back some day,” Natasha Grey said. She wore dark sunglasses to hide her glowing, fiery eyes, but otherwise looked more like a CEO than a magician.
“More things I need to make up for,” Alice said.
“The guardians you created are incredibly brave, Alice,” Doc said. “And when someone creates guardians the way you do, they’re always a reflection of the person who made them. You should take comfort in that. If you weren’t brave, you wouldn’t have such powerful guardians.”
The bear puffed up his chest.
“You hear that, Silverhoof? Powerful,” he said.
“Yeah,” Tony said. “Never going to get used to the talking bear. You know he likes baking shows? Somehow that made it even weirder.”
Lady Dreamless stepped forward and took Alice’s hand.
“Little wizard,” she said. “Are you ready to begin your training? You’ll be safe and well-cared for, in a place where the impossible happens every day. I promise you, it is a wonderful place to learn your craft.”
“I think I’m ready,” Alice said.
“Also, I hope you like dogs,” Lady Dreamless said. As if commanded, the two demon hounds each picked up one of Alice’s bags in their jaws to carry them.
“Okay,” Alice said, taking a deep breath. She sighed, then threw her arms around both of her parents. Doc averted his gaze for a moment to give them privacy.
“If you will, Doctor,” Lady Dreamless said. “We’ll meet again soon.”
“We will,” Doc said, producing the planar knife from a sheath on his belt. He concentrated, thinking clearly of the Dreamless Lands, and sliced open a gap in reality. The dogs trotted through, as if happy to be going home. The bear saluted Doc and Jane as he walked by, then led his figment companions into the portal as well. Lastly, Lady Dreamless and Alice stepped through, hand in hand.
Alice never stopped looking back at her parents, eyes locked on them until the portal gently closed.
“We just sent our baby girl to another world,” Becca said. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“I think there’s a bottle of wine in the fridge,” Tony said.
“You, husband, are supposed to be recovering.”
“I think watching our kid travel to Narnia through a portal in our back yard is a reasonable excuse to not follow doctor’s orders for one day,” he said. He held out a hand to Doc, who shook it. “We can call you any time, you say?”
“Always,” Doc said.
“This is like sending a kid to college though, right? No panicking the first weekend? Give her time to get comfortable and adjust?” Becca said.
“We could always send you to the Dreamless Lands with her,” Natasha said. “But I’ve spent some time there. It’s like
“It’s why we’re here,” Doc said. “You don’t have to thank us.”
Eventually, the Lapines went into their house, holding hands and arguing good-naturedly over the bottle of wine. Doc caught them bickering a little bit about how soon they could use the mirror to call Alice.
“I think I need to go visit my folks,” Jane said.
“I’ve been texting my mom this entire time,” Emily said. “Can I bug you for a teleportation spell, Doc?”
Doc laughed.
“Of course,” he said, opening another, less spectacular portal for Emily to walk through. Jane took off, a streak of flames in the air.
“Just us now,” Natasha said.
“You promise you’ll leave Alice alone,” Doc said.
“Oh, gods, you think I need that kind of trouble?” Natasha said. “I’ve never even had a pet. I don’t want to have charge of some magical savant. I can’t handle the mess.”
“You’re almost convincing right now,” Doc said.
“Speaking of convincing,” Natasha said. “I have a job for the both of us.”
Doc raised an eyebrow.
“You’re kidding,” he said.
“I wish I were,” Lady Grey said. “But our friend King Tears was a necromancer, after all. And I believe he may have done a very necromancer-y thing.”
Doc groaned.
“Tell me he didn’t,” Doc said.
“That arrogant bastard stored his soul in a jar somewhere so he could come back again.”
“Nobody wants to come back as a lich,” Doc said. “That’s so…”
“Gauche?” Natasha said.
“I was going to say medieval,” Doc said. “But sure, trashy works too.”
“So will you help me find whatever box or jar our least favorite sorcerer stored his soul in?” Natasha said. “I’d like to recycle it before he comes back.”
“I suppose we don’t have much choice in the matter,” Doc said. “No rest for the wicked, is there.”
Chapter 63: We’re all indestructible, sometimes
Emily and Henry searched a room they’d never seen before with industrial-strength flashlights, coughing at the sand and dust kicked up when they opened the door. Neal stood passively behind them, unbothered by the debris.
“You’ve really never been in this room before,” Emily said, pulling her goggles down to protect her eyes.
“No,” Henry said. “Why do you keep asking that?”
“How long was the Tower your team’s base of operations?”
“I had my own corporation at the time,” Henry said. “I wasn’t a bored teenager opening up every door in the base.”
“This room looks important,” Emily said.
“It really doesn’t,” Henry replied, aiming his light at a string of cobwebs. “Clearly the place has run for… three generations of superheroes? Without anyone ever coming in here to check the plumbing.”
Neal’s heavy footfalls stirred up more dust from the floor.
“Odd,” he said. “Designation: Coldwall and Designation: Entropy Emily, I have never encountered this room on any of the schematics, but now that I have a location for it, the plans for the Tower do show an unmapped space in this area. It’s always been there, but the way it falls between stories has made it somewhat unremarkable.”
“There was a hotel like this in Chicago,” Emily said. “A serial killer used it to get rid of his victims.”
“That’s where your brain just went?” Henry said. “Right to serial killers?”
Emily pushed her goggles up dramatically, staring Henry in the eyes.
“What if there’s been a serial killer on the ship the whole time,” she said.
“Stop,” Henry said.
“The calls are coming from inside the house, Henry,” Emily said.
“Really?” Henry said. “You went there?”
“I don’t hear any calls, Designation: Entropy Emily,” Neal said.
“It’s a metaphor or something,” Emily said. She meandered around the room, kicking pipes that seemed to lead nowhere with her boot. “Ever think this spaceship looks more than a little alive?”
“In some ways, it is, Designation: Entropy,” Neal said. “It had a sort of self-repairing system and a rudimentary intelligence I interfaced with, at least until the crash. Both have been offline ever since.”
“The ship was alive?” Henry said, incredulous.
“Alive may be inaccurate, Designation: Coldwall,” Neal said. “But it was not exactly inert, either.”
“Kate killed our spaceship,” Emily said.
“I would recommend you not say that out loud in front of Designation: Dancer,” Neal said. “It appears to distress her.”
“Neal, did you tell Kate she killed our spaceship?” Emily said.
“I sometimes struggle with complex human emotional states,” Neal said.
“So do we all, big guy,” Emily said.
She noticed a lever on the wall, the size of a slingshot. Curiosity, as it often does, overwhelmed her.
“Hey, I think I found the light switch,” she said, flipping it to the “up” position.
The entire ship
rumbled.
“Did you just flip a switch we hadn’t tested yet?” Henry said.
“Fortune favors the bold,” Emily said.
The ship hummed and shook. The ground shifted beneath their feet. Henry, with his bad leg, almost toppled over.
“We have to get to the control room,” he said, panic in his eyes.
Together, they bolted from the room, leaving poor Neal clomping after them awkwardly.
***
“So I’m thinking once you’re back up and running again, I could take you out to the Luminae base,” Billy said. He and Bedlam were sitting together in the rearranged rec room, watching a show about misbehaving magical grad students on a tablet.
“Do you have any idea how you’ll get me, someone who needs oxygen to survive, all the way out to Saturn?” Bedlam said.
“I have many ideas,” Billy said. “I’m not sure if any of them will work, but I have ideas.”
“How about we just go somewhere on Earth that doesn’t involve fighting power-mad bad guys?” Bedlam said.
“Saturn is really pretty.”
“I believe you.”
“Look, the way I see it, we never get to be normal, right?” Billy said. “So we might as well go all in. Vacation in space. What’s more super-heroic than that?”
Bedlam laughed and sank down in the chair.
“Okay, fine, I admit it. I still want to see the alien space station. But only if we can borrow, like a space RV or something.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Billy said.
The ship shook. Billy and Bedlam stared at each other.
“I don’t even want to know,” Billy said.
“Neither do I. But…”
“Fine,” Billy said, helping her to her feet. “Let’s go see what Emily broke.”
***
“So you’re not going back to the City,” Titus said.
“I think I need to travel a bit,” Kate said. She sat cross-legged on a cot, hair pulled back messily, her gear scattered haphazardly around her.
“Like where?” Titus said.
“My parents used to take me all over when I was little,” Kate said. “I was too young to appreciate it. And now I’ve been on a vengeance kick for… the rest of my miserable life. Maybe it’s time to go see Paris or something.”
“I think it’s a good idea,” Titus said.
Kate studied his face, then leaned back.
“Are you not going to ask to come with me?” Kate said.
“I thought this was like, a journey of self-discovery,” Titus said. “You don’t invite yourself along on a journey of self-discovery.”
“Look, I don’t know how to be nice. Okay?” Kate said, exasperated. “ I thought if I talked about it enough you’d invite yourself with me and we could avoid the awkwardness.”
“You expected the self-loathing, depressed, introverted werewolf to just invite himself on your walkabout?” Titus said.
“You remain my one and only weak spot when it comes to assessing a target’s behavior,” Kate said. “So, do you want to come with me, or not?”
“I’d love to,” Titus said.
“I guess Doc learned a lot about magic while he was traveling,” Kate said, mumbling the last part.
“You don’t have to…” Titus said.
“No, you’re right. Someone needs to know these things,” Kate said. “Just try not to get weird.”
“Weirder.”
“You know what I meant,” Kate said.
Before Titus could reply, the room shook as if struck by an earthquake. A rumbling hum filled the air.
“I just want one day without a crisis,” Titus said. “Just one day.”
***
Jane barreled down the hallway from her room, trying to remember where in the Tower Henry and Emily had been doing most of their work. They clearly either fixed or broke something, but from the violent sounds she’d heard a moment ago, she really couldn’t tell which they’d successfully done this time.
Then she heard laughing.
She followed the sound, tripping over exposed wiring and knocking a toolbox over along the way. She spotted Kate and Titus at the end of the hall and waved for them to follow, not waiting for them to catch up. Finally, she located the command center, where Henry had been testing the ship’s electronics for months.
Emily and Henry were dancing.
Not just dancing, Jane realized. It was some sort of rehearsed dance in perfect imitation of a dance from the Peanuts cartoon. Behind them, Neal had sprung into a clunky version of the dance moves Snoopy did famously on Schroeder’s piano.
“What are you doing?” Jane said.
“We fixed it!” Henry said.
“To infinity and beyond, baby!” Emily said, grabbing Jane’s arms and pulling her into a joyously dumb dance.
“Fixed what?” Jane said.
“We’re flying, guys,” Billy said, jogging into the room, Bedlam in tow.
“We’re airborne again,” Henry said. “Neal, can you call up the external cameras?”
The android nodded, and several monitors blinked on, showing an incomplete panorama of the desert outside. They were rising higher and higher, shedding sand like rain. In the distance, the hot desert sun was just dipping into a sunset behind the dunes.
“I never thought the old bird would fly again,” Jane said.
Kate and Titus walked in last. The werewolf grinned, shaking his head.
“I knew you could do it, Henry,” he said.
“Gotta give Emily this one,” Henry said. “She found the missing piece of the puzzle.”
“I’m a genius, yo,” Emily said. “How many times do I have to tell you guys?”
Kate was quiet for a moment, looking around the room with her usual studious, emotionless expression. But Jane caught just the hint of a smile in her friend’s eyes.
“I thought I broke you forever,” Kate said, barely a whisper. But Jane heard her.
Nothing around here is broken forever, Jane thought. We’re all indestructible. It just takes a little while to get there, sometimes.
Epilogue: Once, in the City
The Tower, as it will always be known even though it was now more of a flying saucer, drifted over the City like a sentinel. The ship looked a bit worse for wear, but its presence, the blinking lights, the soft hum as it floated high above, was reassuring.
The Indestructibles, though, were gathered on the rooftop of Kate’s hideout. Doc appeared out of thin air with pizza. Emily floated around serving drinks. It was a viewing party, after all. They wanted to watch the Tower make its circuit above the City it had called home, the sentinel in the sky.
Jane sat in a quiet corner, watching the ship. Billy sat down next to her and handed her a glass.
“You going back to the stars, Billy Case?” Jane asked.
“Not yet,” he said. “Dude and I talked. Our place is here, for now.”
“It’ll be good to have you here,” Jane said.
“Yeah,” Emily said, butting in as always. “I tried to teach Henry how to play a few FPS games but he’s terrible. I need my bro back.”
“There are no game consoles on Saturn,” Billy said.
“Well then, easy decision, right?” Emily said.
“Also, we’re just starting to talk to each other like borderline adults,” Bedlam said. She sidled up next to Billy, unconsciously admiring her new right hand. The cybernetics expert Henry matched her up with had provided a complete replacement. It was experimental, but Bedlam told him she was happy to be the guinea pig if his work might help regular people who needed it. Of course, she then had the limb doctored up by one of Agent Black’s contacts, saying she wasn’t too crazy about being an off-the-shelf cyborg.
“Speaking of people who run off on a regular basis,” Billy said. “Hey Titus, are you going to the great white north again?”
Titus made a vaguely vulgar gesture at Billy, then, after scooping a slice of pizza onto a plate, meandered over to
join them.
“Nah. Doc and I have some stuff to discuss,” he said. “Expand my knowledge base.”
“Fine, I’m in,” Kate said, rolling her eyes at all of them. “I only really dislike most of you. But you’ll never save the world without me.”
“I think I’m on the mostly disliked list,” Emily said. “But that’s okay. I love you, Kate Miller.”
Kate started down Emily hard, then reached out and ruffled her neon blue hair.
“I truly can’t stand you, Emily,” she said.
“Told you,” Emily said.
Doc and Henry joined them last. The two older men had been having a quiet conversation away from the group, with Neal dutifully listening in. The android followed them over with a seriousness that teetered on parody.
“You guys look like you have bad news,” Jane said. “What’s up?”
“Henry figured out something about the Tower we never knew about before,” Doc said.
“Even when we were close to your age and always there, we had no idea the Tower’s capabilities,” Henry said. “I mean, we knew it was more than just a building. We knew it was a spaceship in disguise. But what we didn’t know was… well. It’s a lot more ship than we thought.”
“I knew it was bigger on the inside!” Emily said.
“Tell me it’s not a time machine,” Titus said.
“Tell me it is a time machine,” Emily said.
“No, and no,” Henry said. “But what we did find is that all this time, it’s had what, if my calculations are correct, is an FTL engine.”
“That sounds alarming,” Jane said.
“We have a hyperdrive?” Emily yelled.
“In layman’s terms, yes, we have a hyperdrive,” Henry said.
“After saving Entropia, I never thought I’d have a better day,” Emily said. “I have been proven wrong. Hey, Titus, you know what this means?”
“I don’t think I want to know what this means,” Titus said.
“It means someday I’ll get to actually tell you to ‘Punch it, Chewie,’” Emily said.
“I’ve spent time inside your mind, and I still don’t quite understand you,” Titus said.
The Indestructibles (Book 5): The Crimson Child Page 30