Tiny hands dig into me. The boy lets out a soft moan that grows into a keening wail.
No, wait. It’s not the kid this time.
The assault suddenly stops. One of the men orders a retreat. I risk glancing up. Damage Inc. is making a run for a junker of a van parked along the side of the road in front of the bank.
Oh no. I did not go through all this to let you bastards get away.
I reach out with my telekinesis. I can’t see straight, I’ve pushed my body to and well past its limits, and I’m aiming for a moving target. It’s a total desperation move, but it pays off. One of the men — I can’t tell which one — face-plants in the middle of the road. One of his teammates skids to a stop and moves to pick him up, but thinks better of it as a police cruiser zooms past me and screeches to a halt, neatly placing itself between my playmates and me. Damage Inc. piles into the van as my savior jumps out of his cruiser, shotgun in hand. He pumps off two quick blasts at the fleeing vehicle. It swings around a corner and vanishes from sight.
“Are you all right?” the cop says to me. “Miss? Are you all right?”
I try to tell him to forget about me, go check on Sgt. Scotty and the boy, but I can’t make my mouth work.
Everything goes black.
FIFTEEN
The next thing I know, a paramedic is shining a penlight in my eyes and asking me if I’m okay. I feel like I got run over by a thundering stampede of Clydesdales, but the actual damage isn’t as bad. There’s a nasty gash on my right shoulder that’ll need stitches, but everything else wrong with me can be corrected with a steak dinner, a gallon of Gatorade, and sleeping until Groundhog’s Day.
“Do you know anything about Sergeant Scotty?” I ask the paramedic.
He presses a wad of gauze onto my wound. OW. “The officer who was shot? Sorry, no,” he says, “but the boy’s okay. He’s shaken up real bad but he wasn’t hurt.”
I nod and do a quick mental tally. In the win column, we have one little boy traumatized but safe, one perpetrator — the Riveter — in custody, and one Sara Danvers alive if no longer in mint condition. In the loss column, we have three suspects on the loose and one good woman who may or may not survive getting riddled by gunfire. That makes the score three to two, which barely qualifies as a win.
“I want you to know,” the paramedic says, “I won’t tell anyone.”
“Tell anyone what? Oh. Right,” I say. My headset and cloak came off at some point before I regained consciousness, presumably removed by the paramedic so he could examine and treat me. Yep, I’m sitting here in the back of the ambulance, exposed to the world.
“I don’t know who you are, obviously,” he says, “but I’ll keep your secret.”
I grunt. “Haven’t been hearing that much lately.”
“Sorry?”
“Nothing.”
Chief Bronson eventually finds me amidst the chaos. After a token inquiry about my well-being — feeling like total crap, thanks — he hits me up for details of the incident. I give him the short form of the events and try to focus instead on providing useful details, but aside from a description of the van, I don’t have much to offer.
“Don’t worry about it. You snagged us a suspect and I’m betting he’s the type who’ll roll on his partners if we give him enough incentive,” the chief says. His radio squawks, and he turns away to respond. “One of your teammates is here,” he tells me. “I’ll send him over.”
I expect to see Concorde, but I get Matt, and he’s in his full Captain Trenchcoat ensemble. He climbs into the ambulance.
“What happened? Are you all right?” he says, spotting my injury as soon as he asks the question. “What the hell happened? You were supposed to call for backup! Why didn’t you call me? And why are you out of uniform? Jeez, why not just wear a big sign with your name on it?”
“Will you back off?!” I snap. “I didn’t call for backup because I was too busy trying not to die and saving a little kid and Sergeant Scotty might be dead for all I know and I don’t care about my damn costume because my arm hurts and the last thing I need is you dumping on me!”
My rant ends with a sob, and I slump into Matt’s arms to cry. My paramedic quietly slips out to give us some privacy.
“You’re an ass,” I blubber.
“I know. You’re right. I am. I’m sorry,” Matt says. “I heard someone got shot. I thought it was you. I freaked. I’m sorry.”
He holds me and lets me cry it out. Matt Steiger may be a thoughtless jerk sometimes, but he’s my thoughtless jerk.
“I need stitches,” I say.
“I’ll take you. Come on.”
I sign the waiver stating I declined ambulance service, throw my cloak back on, and follow Matt to the edge of the crime scene. We pass through the sawhorse barricade and by a cluster of Kingsport’s local media pressed against it. Walt Rivers, who runs the Kingsport Report blog, kindly steps out of our way without saying a word, but Dorian Shelley, a reporter for the Kingsport Chronicle, follows us back to Matt’s car, barking questions all the while. Matt completely ignores him, which is noteworthy; he almost never passes on a chance to sass someone.
On our way to the hospital, we shed just enough of our uniforms to pass the rest off as normal clothing. Matt escorts me into the emergency room, where we report my injury as an accident involving a power tool. The woman taking my information also forces me to give her a phone number for my legal guardian, who she’s obligated to call about my admission. Ohh, man, Christina is going to lose her mind.
I wait almost an hour before I see a doctor. She peels the gauze away and winces in sympathy. The wound looks horrifying and bleeds like crazy, but it could have been worse. If Driller Killer had been a half inch to the left I’d be heading into surgery instead of getting stitches. The doctor sews me up and sends me off with a couple of prescriptions, one for antibiotics and one for painkillers. Matt takes me to the CVS near my house where I only fill the antibiotics script. I remember when Matt was on pain meds after he got his nose broken. He hated it. He said it made him feel loopy and disconnected, which sounded a lot like how I felt when my powers first manifested and Bart put me on medication to suppress my telepathy. It sucked, though it did give me a lot of incentive to learn how to control my abilities.
Matt pulls up to the curb outside my house. “I’ll help you in,” he says.
I throw my cloak over my injured shoulder. “I can make it.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure,” I lie.
“I’ll call you in the morning, see how you’re doing.”
“Call late.”
He nods. “Good luck with Christina.”
All the luck in the world isn’t going to help me with this. I insist to her I can take care of myself, and then I come home with stitches? This meltdown is going to make all her other meltdowns look like hissy fits.
I pause on the porch and turn to flash Matt a thumbs up. Made it to the door without passing out. Go me.
I step inside. Christina’s sitting on the couch, her face tight and drawn and her fists balled up on top of her legs — she’s primed and ready to blow up at me. Her expression changes as I close the door, changes to something less angry and more distraught.
“Sara,” she says.
She dashes up to me and comes in for a hug. I twist out of the way so she doesn’t unwittingly grab my shoulder. “Careful,” I say.
She gives me a look. I might as well get this over with. I shrug off my cloak to show off my new dressing, a big wad of gauze and medical tape covering my shoulder.
“Oh, God, Sara,” she gasps.
“It looks worse than it is.”
I brace for a brisk round of shouting and swearing. Instead I get a tearful, “Honey, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I say. I don’t get it. Where’s the freak-out?
“No. I’m sorry,” she repeats. “Ben. He went out drinking with some of our coworkers last night...”
After that, everyt
hing that comes out of her mouth is a buzz, like static, but I don’t need to hear her; I know exactly where this is going. I knew this would happen. Dammit, I knew this would happen!
“It was all over the office this morning,” Christina says. “I had people all day long cornering me, asking me if it was true, asking about Carrie — I didn’t know what to say. Sara, honey, I am so sorry.”
I should be furious with her. I should be lashing out in blind rage.
Nothing. I feel nothing.
“Sara.” I turn away from her and take my phone out. “Sara.”
I ignore her and call Edison. He’ll know what to do. He always knows what to do.
“Sara,” he says. “Sorry I missed you at the scene. Goes without saying things were a little crazy. How are you?”
“Not good. We have a problem. We have a huge problem,” I say. I tell him what happened, how Christina’s idiot boyfriend blabbed my secret all of two days — two frigging days after I warned him what could happen if he talked. Two days to make my greatest fear a cold reality. Two days to destroy my life.
“Ohh, Sara,” Edison sighs.
“What do we do? Come on, boss, I need that big brain of yours to figure something out. How do we fix this?”
For a long time I hear nothing but Edison’s slow, steady breathing. He’s thinking. He’s analyzing the situation, looking at all the angles, considering all the variables, and any second he’s going to hit me with a brilliant plan to undo the damage and set everything right. That’s what he does.
“We can’t,” he says. “I’m sorry, Sara; there’s no way to fix this.”
“But...” That’s all I say. That’s all I can say.
“Too many people know. If the news is all over Christina’s workplace today, it’s already spread too far to contain.”
“I see,” I say. I hang up without saying goodbye.
“Sara, what did he say?” Christina asks, kneeling down next to me. How did I get on the floor? When did that happen?
“There’s nothing he can do. There’s nothing anyone can do.”
She moans. “God, Sara, I’m —”
“Sorry. I know. You’re sorry.” I stand up, and a sudden burst of manic energy sends me running upstairs. Without thinking about it, like my body is on autopilot, I grab my backpack and start stuffing clothes into it. My shoulder burns in protest, and I swear I feel a stitch pop, but I don’t care. Some primal impulse is driving me. I need to get out of here. I need to get out of this house, away from Christina.
She appears in my doorway. “What are you doing?”
“Leaving,” I say. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t live here anymore. This isn’t working.”
“Sara, please. I promise you — I swear to you this won’t happen again.”
A laugh spills out of me. “Of course it won’t. How could it? You’ve betrayed every secret I had.”
I zip up my backpack and move toward the door. Christina instinctively grabs for me and ends up wrapping her hand around my wound. I cry out and jerk away. A blast of raw, searing pain staggers me, and I fall to the floor. Christina reaches out to help me up. I slap her hand away and glare at her. She backs off, her hands up as if in surrender, and whimpers another worthless apology.
She doesn’t make another attempt to stop me.
***
I manage to reach the Hynes train stop without getting lost on the Green Line. That’d be an impressive feat if I were clear-headed. That I made it in my current state is nothing short of a full-blown direct-from-God miracle.
Meg is there to greet me on the other side of the turnstile. She hugs me, taking care to avoid my injured arm.
“I’m sorry to dump all this on you,” I say.
“Hey. What did I tell you?” she says.
“I know; it’s part of being my girlfriend. I’m still sorry.”
“It’s okay. Come on.”
We walk back to her dorm and head up to her room. It’s a nice space. It’s narrow but long, and because it’s a corner unit, there are big windows at the far end looking out over the city. If this was a regular Boston apartment, she’d be paying four figures a month for rent. Best of all, it’s all hers now; her roommate dropped out a month into the term. I drop my backpack on the floor, creating the sole bit of mess in the otherwise immaculate room, and we sit on the bed.
Meg wraps an arm around me. “Tell me everything.”
I do, dispassionately, like I’m telling her about some other poor girl’s spectacularly awful day. “I don’t know what to do,” I say, “about anything.”
“What you’re going to do is get some sleep because you’re absolutely exhausted. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
We get ready for bed. I lay on my left side, which feels strange; I generally sleep righty. Meg snuggles in behind me, carefully draping her arm around my waist, and kisses the back of my head.
“Meg?”
“Yeah?”
“Everything’s going to be okay. Right?”
“Everything will be okay. I promise.”
It’s an empty vow. She can’t put the brakes on this runaway train any more than I can. She’s only saying it to comfort me.
It helps.
“Love you, Strawberry,” she says.
“Love you,” I say.
I close my eyes.
PART TWO: OUT IN THE OPEN
SIXTEEN
I open them again, grudgingly, when my phone goes off. I blink and squint from the brilliant winter sunlight flooding the room.
“That your phone?” Meg mumbles.
“Yeah, think so,” I say.
“I hate it. It must die.”
I wriggle out from under the covers and crawl onto the floor, feeling around in my discarded clothes for my phone. I dig it out of my pants pocket.
“What?” I grumble.
“Sorry, did I not call late enough?” Matt says.
“I could have used another week or two.”
“How’re you feeling?”
Man, that’s a loaded question. “We need to talk. All of us. The whole team.”
“Aw, crap. Now what?”
“I’ll tell you when we’re all together.”
“That’ll be easy. We’re at Stuart’s now. Hold on, I’ll come get you.”
“I’m not at Christina’s,” I say. “I’m in the city. I spent the night with Meg.”
A shocked silence follows, then, “Uh, okay.”
“I’ll explain that too. Give me, like, an hour. I’ll meet you at Stuart’s.” I hang up. “And in the meantime I’ll try to figure out how to tell them stupid Christina’s stupid boyfriend screwed us all.”
“I know this is scary,” Meg says, sliding out of bed to join me on the floor, “but I can tell you from personal experience, having a public identity isn’t a death sentence, literally or figuratively. It’s not going to be easy. I won’t lie about that. There’ll be an adjustment period and it’ll be rough at times, but it’s not the end of the world.”
“How do you deal with them? The rough times, I mean.”
“I deal with them as they come. That’s all you can do.” She pats my knee. “Come on. Let’s get dressed.”
For once, I don’t argue with her. It doesn’t even occur to me to try.
I might finally be getting the hang of this relationship thing.
***
I use the car ride back to Kingsport to rehearse what I plan to say to the others. That takes all of five minutes. We’ve all been in enough crappy situations to know that, sometimes, there is no way to cushion the blow of bad news, so you might as well come right out and say it.
We pull into the Lumleys’ driveway, which is missing a car. Right, Stuart’s grandmother is coming in today. The Lumleys must have gone to pick her up. That takes a little of the pressure off; I really don’t want an audience for what I’m about to do.
Meg smiles and takes my hand. I’ll be here the whole time, the gesture says.
Stuart lets us in. He doesn’t offer a greeting. Matt and Missy jump up from the couch, curiosity and concern written all over their faces.
“There’s no easy way to say this,” I begin. “Our secret identities have been compromised. Christina told me Ben went out with some drinking buddies the other night...”
I don’t have to go any further. In unison they slump and let out an annoyed sigh — and that’s it. No screaming or cursing, no recriminations, no anger at all.
“Not that I’m complaining,” I say, “but why aren’t you guys tearing me a new one right now?”
“Because my parents told their marriage counselor about me,” Matt says. “A few days ago, as a matter of fact. But it’s no big deal because of doctor-patient confidentiality and what were they supposed to tell him?” he sneers.
“Mom told my grandmother,” Missy says. “I know because Grandma called Dad last night to yell at him. Then she yelled at me. Then she yelled at Dad some more. Grandma’s a worse motormouth than I am. Everyone on Long Island probably knows about me by now.”
“And any minute, my grandmother is going to come through that door to read me the riot act,” Stuart says. “Looks like none of our parents can keep their mouths shut.”
“That’s it, then?” I say.
“Yeah,” Matt says. “That’s it.”
And that’s how the Hero Squad’s Secret Identity Era ends: not with a bang or a whimper but with a resigned shrug.
“You know what the funny thing is? I’m actually kind of relieved. I feel like I should be having a total meltdown over this but it’s not there.” Matt says. “Who knows? Maybe this’ll make life easier. We won’t have to worry about keeping our stories straight or waste time changing into our outfits if there’s an emergency...”
Action Figures - Issue Six: Power Play Page 13